THE  SIS  TINE  EYE 

AND  OTHER  POEMS 


B.  Y 


PERCY  MACKAYE 


POEMS 


BY   PERCY   MACKAYE 


The  Canterbury  Pilgrims.     A  Comedy. 

Ftiiris,  the  Wolf.    A  Tragedy. 

Jeanne  D1  Arc. 

Sappho  and  Phaon. 

The  Scarecrow.  A  Tragedy  of  the  Ludicrous. 

Mater.     An  American  Study  in  Comedy. 

The  Playhouse  and  the  Play. 

Poems. 

Uniform,  i2mo.     $1.25  net,  each. 


Lincoln:  A  Centenary  Ode.    izmo.   7$c.  net 


THE   SISTINE   EVE 

AND  OTHER  POEMS 


BY 

PERCY  MACKAYE 

AUTHOR  OF  "THE  PRESENT  HOUR,"  ETC. 


gorfc 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
1915 

All  rights  reserved 


COPYBIOHT,   1909, 

BT  THE  MACMILLAN   COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.    Published  December,  1909.    Reprinted 
February,  1915. 


Norfajooto  $r«s 

J.  8.  Gushing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


Co 

W.  V.  M.        E.  A.  R. 
& 

K.  T. 

IN  FELLOWSHIP 


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FOB  permission  to  reprint  certain  poems  in 
this  volume,  the  author  makes  his  acknowledg 
ments  to  the  editors  of  the  following  journals  : 
The  Century  Magazine,  The  Outlook,  Every 
body's  Magazine,  Collier's  Weekly,  The  Harvard 
Graduates9  Magazine. 


vii 


CONTENTS 

PAKT  ONE 
POEMS  CHIEFLY  OCCASIONAL 

PAGE 
TlCONDEROGA     .  ...  4  ...  3 

TENNYSON         .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .16 

THE  AIR  VOYAGE  UP  THE  HUDSON       ...      21 
CHORAL  SONG  FOR  THE  NEW  THEATRE        .        .      23 
ODE  TO  THE  AMERICAN  UNIVERSITIES  ...      24 
PROLOGUE  TO  THE  SAINT-GAUDENS  MASQUE        .      38 
A  CHRISTMAS  CAROL       •        .        .        •        .        .42 
THE  DEATH  OF  VERESTCHAGIN     •        ...      46 
SHIRLEY  COMMON     .        .        .        .        .        .        .      47 

ISAAK  WALTON  IN  MAIDEN  LANE  .  .  .49 
THE  SISTINE  EVE .  51 

PART  TWO 
POEMS  LYRICAL  AND  DESCRIPTIVE 

GROUP  I  .  ...  •  •  .  ,  .89 
GROUP  II  .  .  ,  *  •  •  .  •  .  141 
GROUP  III  .  .  ...  ,  .  .  155 

INDEX  TO  POEMS  IN  PART  Two  185 


PART  ONE 

POEMS   CHIEFLY  OCCASIONAL 


TICONDEROGA » 

A  BALLAD 
I 

What  spirits  conjure  theefrom  time, 

Ticonderoga  ? 
On  thy  headland  rock 
Of  history, 

Who  are  these  that  knock 
And  summon  thee 
To  move  thine  ancient  lips  in  rhyme, 

Ticonderoga  ? 

Where  the  wind-blown  swallows 

Veer  and  vary, 

Where  the  shore  and  shallows 

Lie  visionary, 

Titans  three 

Stand  at  my  knee : 

Each  one  is  a  century. 

In  their  shadow,  silently, 

Sits  the  sibyl  Memory. 

And  her  silence  questions  me : 

1  Read  at  the  celebration  of  the  three  hundredth  anni 
versary  of    the  discovery  of  Lake  Champlain,  at  Fort 
Ticonderoga,  July  6,  1909. 
3 


TICONDEROGA 

II 

Who  glide  so  dim  upon  the  lake 

Ticonderoga  ? 
Over  their  dreaming  prow 
The  morning  star 
Blazes  their  goal;  but  now  — 
More  dusk  and  far  — 
What  old  world  dwindles  in  their  wake, 
Ticonderoga  ? 

The  fleur-de-lis,  the  fleur-de-lis  ! 

The  White  Chevalier  —  lo,  'tis  he ! 

His  pale  canoe  along  the  tide 

The  painted  Huron  paddles  guide 

With  dumb,  subdued  elation; 

The  wild  dawn  stains  their  bodies  bare, 

The  wild  dawn  gleams  about  his  hair ; 

Steeped  in  his  soul's  adventure,  lie 

The  valleys  of  discovery  — 

The  peaks  of  expectation. 

Midway  the  lake  they  pause :  on  high 

His  arm  he  raises  solemnly. 

Above  the  lilies,  that  emboss 

His  azure  banner,  and  the  pied 

Algonquin  plumes  that  float  beside, 

He  holds  the  shining  cross. 


TICONDEROGA  < 

"  Champlain  !"  —  The  placid  word 

The  mute  air  hath  not  stirred. 

Touched  by  the  morning's  wing, 

The  ruddied  waters,  quickening, 

Alone  are  kindled  by  that  christening. 

Quaint  splendors  mass 

Within  the  lake's  clear  glass, 

And  liquid  lilies  golden  run 

In  rose  gules  of  the  rising  sun. 

Naught  else  there  of  acclaim 

Greets  the  great  Chevalier's  name, 

Save  where  the  water-fowl's  primeval  broods 

Awake  Bulwagga's  lone  and  echoing  solitudes. 

Ill 

What  strident  horror  breaks  thy  spell, 

Ticonderoga  ? 
What  long  and  ululating  yell? 

The  Iroquois :   in  covert  glade 

They  build  their  pine-bough  palisade, 

And  weave  in  trance 

Their  sachem  dance 

With  hawk-screams  of  their  heathen  wars, 

Till  naked  on  my  shrilling  shores 

Mohawk  and  wild  Algonquin  meet 

And  taunt,  with  fleer  and  blown  conceit, 


TICONDEROGA 

Each  other's  painted  ranks: 

But,  lo  where  now  their  flanks 

Give  way  and  reel ! 

And  'mid  the  silent  sagamores, 

In  shining  cuish  and  casque  of  steel, 

Before  them  all 

Stands  bright  and  tall, 

With  gauntlet  clenched  and  helmet  vised, 

The  calm  knight-errant  of  the  Christ; 

Then,  in  sign  miraculous, 

Levels  his  arquebus 

And,  charged  with  bullets  from  his  bandoleer, 

Looses  the  bolt  of  preternatural  thunder. 

A  sachem  falls :  the  wild  men  stare  in  wonder 

And  mazed  fear; 

Once  more  his  engine  peals,  and  hurls  the  fire 

Whose  flash  shall  kindle  continents  to  ire. 

IV 

Like  sanguine  clouds  at  sunset  spread 
The  ages  slumber  round  thy  head, 

Ticonderoga  ! 
Tremendous  forms 
Loom  in  their  dreams: 
Through  levin-light  of  starless  storms, 
By  giant  fords  of  chartless  streams, 
Saxon  and  Gaul 


TICONDEROGA 

Wrestle  and  rise  and  fall, 

Conquering  the  region  aboriginal. 

Hark  !    From  the  long  tides  of  Lake  George, 

What  rolling  drum-beat  rumbles  through  thy 

gorge, 
Ticonderoga  ? 

O  why  should  woman  weep  for  war  ? 
Or  man  —  why  should  it  vex  him  more  ? 
Or  why  beside  so  sweet  a  shore 

Dreadful  should  the  drum  be  ? 
O  clear  the  snorting  trumpets  neigh, 
And  blithe  the  squealing  bagpipes  play ! 
O  red  the  redcoats  on  the  bay, 

Sailing  with  Abercromby ! 

A  thousand  bateaux  floating  glide 
And  flaunt  their  banners  sheen; 

Calm  isles  swim  by  on  the  summer  tide 
Clad  in  their  birchen  green. 

Lord  Howe  he  lies  on  a  rude  bearskin 

Beneath  the  pleasant  sky; 
Says :   Never  day  hath  fairer  been 

For  one's  dear  land  to  die. 

Says:   Tell  me  true  now,  gallant  Stark, 
What  trail  may  foil  the  Frenchmen  ? 


TICONDEROGA 

Where  should  our  redcoats  disembark 
To  rout  Montcalm  his  henchmen? 

A  trout-brook  once  I  fished,  Lord  Howe, 
To  fry  my  catch  in  bacon : 

Along  that  trail,  Sir,  I'll  allow 
Ticonderoga's  taken. 

O  what  so  wildly  fair  as  war ! 
From  dancing  skiff  and  dripping  oar 
Land  down  on  yonder  dreamy  shore 

And  drowsy  let  the  drum  be. 
O  proud  as  life  the  far  crag's  flush ! 
And  sweet  as  youth  —  the  hermit-thrush  ! 
O  deep  as  death  the  dark  wood's  hush, 

Marching  with  Abercromby ! 


Our  trail  grows  blind,  good  Putnam :   draw 
More  close  your  forest  rangers. 

By  yonder  balsam  [hark  !]  I  saw  — 

Who  calls  there  —  friends  or  strangers  ? 

A  mile  hence  runs  a  mill,  Lord  Howe: 
Might  be  the  Frenchers  sawing; 

Or  likely,  Sir,  ye  heard  yon  crow 
Round  Roger's  Rock  a-cawing. 


TICONDEROGA 

Qui  vive  ?     Their  muskets  flare  the  wood ; 

Franpais!    Their  wild  cheers  start: 
Lord  Howe  is  dropt  down  where  he  stood, 

A  hot  ball  through  his  heart. 

They  drive  them  back,  they  drown  their  boast 
In  blood  and  the  rushing  river, 

But  the  heart  of  Abercromby's  host  — 
The  Lord  of  Hosts  deliver ! 


Said  is  prayer  and  sung  is  psalm; 
In  the  moonlight  waits  Montcalm. 
Felled  is  tree  and  sunk  is  trench; 
On  their  ramparts  rest  the  French. 
Moon  is  waned  and  night  is  gone, 
And  the  plateau,  in  the  dawn, 
Strown  with  strange  gigantic  wrack, 
Bristles  like  a  wild  boar's  back, 
Horrid  shagg'd  with  monstrous  spines 
Of  splintered  oaks  and  tangled  pines. 
Where  last  night  the  setting  sun 
Placid  forest  looked  upon, 
In  its  place  the  sunrise  sees 
Rubble  heaps  of  writhen  trees, 
Boughs  —  that  hid  the  shy  bird's  nest  — 
Sharpened  for  a  soldier's  breast. 


10  TICONDEROGA 

Hot  soars  the  sun :   in  dove-white  swarms 
Cluster  the  dazzling  uniforms 
Along  the  earthworks;    distant  shines 
The  vanguard  of  the  English  lines. 
Scarlet  from  the  sombre  firs 
They  start  like  sudden  tanagers, 
And  smoothly  sweep  the  open  glade 
Toward  the  abatis.     There,  waylaid, 
They  flounder  midst  the  galling  heap 
Of  tumbled  branches,  where  they  leap 
And  crawl,  as  'mid  some  huge  morass. 
Like  locusts  in  storm-beaten  grass. 
The  looming  breastworks  now  they  see 
But  still  no  foemen.     Suddenly, 
Blinding  the  noon,  a  dusk  of  smoke 
Blooms,  and  the  roaring  air  hath  broke 
In  hurricanes  of  scorching  hail, 
Through  which,  to  dying  eyes  that  quail, 
Falls  the  round  sun  —  a  fiery  grail. 

Vive  le  Roi!    rings  from  the  wall 
Of  flame :    Vive  notre  General  I 

Choked  by  the  fury  and  the  fire, 
The  rended  English  ranks  suspire 
A  moment's  pause,  then  maddened  rush 
Stifling  through  the  giant  brush 
Where,  trapped  in  pits  of  jagged  spars, 


TICONDEROGA  11 

Rangers  and  yelling  regulars 
Struggle  to  shoot  and  strain  to  see 
The  blithe  and  viewless  enemy. 

Vive  le  Roi!  shrilly  the  call 
Rings  clear:   Vive  noire  General! 

Whirled  from  the  zigzag  bastion's  scarp, 
The  hellish  crossfire  weaves  its  warp. 
Thrice  they  return,  and  thrice  again: 
Image  of  God  !  and  are  these  men 
With  eyes  upturned  in  sightless  stare, 
Glazed  with  the  dead  hate  that  they  glare : 
And  one,  with  dumb  mouth,  shouts  in  death 
To  one  the  red  blood  strangleth, 
And  one,  outstretched  with  woful  brow, 
Hangs  spiked  upon  a  greenwood  bough, 
Wrought  in  a  sculptured  agony 
Like  Him  that  died  upon  a  tree. 

The  soul  of  Abercromby's  host 

Follows  Lord  Howe  —  his  shining  ghost : 

On  stormy  ridge  and  parapet 

It  rides  in  flame,  it  leads  them  yet; 

Smiling,  with  wistful  image  wan, 

A  dead  man  leads  the  dying  on. 

And  Campbell,  Laird  of  Inverawe, 

Hath  met  the  doom  his  dream  foresaw; 


12  TICONDEROGA 

Pierced  by  his  murdered  kinsman's  eyes, 
His  clansmen  bear  him  where  he  dies. 

Lord  Howe,  Lord  Howe,  why  shouldst  thou 

fall! 

Thy  life  it  was  the  life  of  all ; 
Thy  death  ten  thousand  hath  undone. 
England  hath  sunken  with  the  sun. 
Ticonderoga's  lost  and  won ! 


O  women,  weep  ye  yet  for  war? 
Bugles  and  banners,  flaunt  no  more ! 
For  some  be  sleeping  by  the  shore 

In  slumber  dark,  and  some  be 
Awake  in  fever's  roaring  gorge, 
And  some,  in  crowded  keels  that  forge 
Southward,  curse  heaven  and  Lake  George, 

Flying  with  Abercromby ! 

V 

Still  round  thy  brow  the  riven  war-clouds  range, 

Ticonderoga  : 

The  conquest  marches  though  the  colors  change. 
And  now,  where  revolution's  lightnings  run, 
Beyond  the  battle-smoke,  sublime  and  wan, 
Quivers  the  patient  star  of  Washington. 
Ranger  'gainst  regular, 


TICONDEROGA  13 

Sundered  in  enmity, 
Opens  thine  ancient  scar 
Newly  — for  liberty. 
Now  with  a  rushing  noise 
Burst  freedom's  fountains 
Where  the  green-forest  boys 
March  from  their  mountains. 
Listen!     What  wheedling  fife 
Quickens  thy  smouldering  memories  to  Iife9 
Ticonderoga  ? 

We're  marching  for  to  take  the  fort 

With  Ethan  —  Ethan  Allen, 
That  when  with  fight  he  fills  a  quart 

He  ups  and  gulps  a  gallon. 
Double-quick  it !  faster !  —  hep ! 

Lord  !  his  blood  is  brandy. 
Mind  the  music  and  the  step, 

And  hold  your  muskets  handy. 

Friends  and  fellow  soldiers  —  halt ! 

Mind  your  P's,  you  noodle ! 
What  mother's  son  will  earn  his  salt 

And  dance  to  Yankee  Doodle? 
There  stands  Ticonderoga:   state 

What  now  ye  mean  to  do  there. 
Yon's  the  fortress'  wicket -gate: 

How  many  will  march  through  there  ? 


14  TICONDEROGA 

As  many  now  as  volunteer 

Poise  your  firelocks  !  —  Right,  Sir ! 
Each  man  has  swung  his  musket  clear, 

Each  man  files  off  to  fight,  Sir. 
The  British  sentry  points  his  gun, 

And  Ethan  hears  him  click  it; 
He  fires :   the  Yankees  yell  *  Come  on  ! ' 

And  thunder  through  the  wicket. 

They  thunder  through  the  barracks  court 

And  ram  the  British  mortars.  — 
What  rag-tail  rebels  make  such  sport 

In  great  King  George's  quarters  ?  — 
King  George's  style  is  over,  Sir ! 

You  redcoats  wear  the  wrong  dress: 
Ground  arms  to  the  great  Jehovah,  Sir, 

And  the  Continental  Congress ! 

VI 

Thine  eyes  grow  dreamy  in  the  evening  haze, 

Ticonderoga. 
Where,  in  mimic  art 
Ephemeral, 

Thy  pilgrims  hold  their  part 
In  festival, 
On  what  eternal  pageants  dost  thou  gaze, 

Ticonderoga  ? 


TICONDEROGA  15 

Soldier  and  saint  and  sagamore 
Are  vanished  from  my  tranquil  shore. 
The  ripples  that  the  summer  breeze 
Awakes  —  they  are  my  reveries ; 
The  day-fly  dartles  where  below 
The  Royal  Savage  hides  her  woe, 
And  where  the  silver  lake-trout  ply 
Arnold  still  grapples  with  Sir  Guy. 
On  Mount  Defiance,  looming  proud, 
Glowers  Burgoyne  —  a  twilight  cloud, 
In  whose  spent  shower's  radiance 
Macdonough  fights  the  Confiance. 

Battles  whose  blood  is  liberty, 
Heroes  whose  dreams  are  history, 
Imagination  hath  them  wrought, 
Tempering  all  things  to  a  thought, 
Painting  the  land,  the  lake,  the  sky, 
With  pageants  of  the  dreamer's  eye. 

So  by  my  visionary  shore, 

Soldier  and  saint  and  sagamore 

Live  in  my  shadow  evermore: 

Where,  rapt  in  beauty,  sleeps  Champlain, 

Lulled  are  the  passion  and  the  pain; 

The  legend  and  the  race  remain. 


TENNYSON l 

I 

SONG  keeps  no  dim  centennial 

Where  one  who  sang  lies  hushed  in  earth, 
And  Beauty  wears  not  death  nor  birth 

Though  lovers  bring  her  flower  and  pall ; 

While  Life  itself,  in  endless  youth, 
Is  sown  along  sidereal  deeps, 
From  darkness,  where  the  dreamer  sleeps, 

Trembles  the  morning-star  of  Truth. 

Not  to  the  singer,  but  to  Song 

That  lights  with  viewless  finger-tips 
Her  flaming  music  at  his  lips, 

Those  immortalities  belong. 

Yet  to  the  singer,  for  the  sake 
Of  austere  service  lowly  lent 
To  make  his  mind  her  instrument, 

The  flower  and  pall  of  song  we  take. 

1  Written  to  be  read  before   the  Brooklyn  Institute, 
1909,  in  commemoration  of  the  hundredth  anniversary 
of  the  birth  of  Alfred,  Lord  Tennyson. 
16 


TENNYSON  17 

II 

Among  the  mighty  island-choir 

His  'earliest  pipe'  was  faintly  heard 
When  still  the  hearts  of  time  were  stirred 

With  revolutionary  fire, 

While  lights  and  echoes  still  were  blown 
Across  the  darkening  lyric  sky 
Of  Shelley's  shrilling  ecstasy 

And  Byron's  orphic  organ-tone. 

He  watched  the  shuddering  Age,  aghast, 
Behold  the  sphinx  of  Science  grow 
A  lion  vigilant,  and  throw 

Its  shadow  o'er  the  golden  past, 

Assuming  slow  an  awful  Shape 

That  stood  impassive  at  the  feast, 
Revealing  man  a  mystic  beast  — 

The  evolution  of  an  ape. 


Still  shy  he  sought  his  shunning  Muse 
Remote  from  sceptic  clash  and  curse, 
And  mixed  the  palette  of  his  verse 

With  nature's  mellow  gleams  and  hues, 

c 


18  TENNYSON 

And  crowned  his  rhyme  with  bloom  of  fern 
In  fiery  orchid  palaces, 
And  caught  in  crystal  chalices 

Bright  spillings  from  a  Grecian  urn; 

Till,  touched  by  human  lover's  hand, 
The  singer  rose  to  larger  thought 
And  took  the  spurs  of  Lancelot 

And  galloped  into  Fairyland. 


But  most  of  olden  fair  romance 

Is  rust  on  Reason's  shining  shield, 
And  Merlin's  hand  is  weak  to  wield 

The  wand  of  Science'  necromance. 

And  soon  the  mage  of  modern  rhyme 
Poured  all  his  alchemy  of  art 
In  newer  purpose  —  to  impart 

The  noble  doubtings  of  his  time; 

And  sped  the  Mediaeval  ghost 

Of  faith,  and  hailed  the  love  of  all, 
The  lessening  individual, 

The  kingly  *  common  sense  of  most ' ; 


TENNYSON  19 

And  watched,  with  keen  prophetic  scan, 

Wild  lightnings  from  the  embattled  crew 
Of  '  navies  grappling  in  the  blue ' 

Quenched  by  'the  Parliament  of  Man.' 

Thus  on  his  centenary  page 

The  Muse  has  scrolled  his  name  with  hers: 

A  Prince  of  old  Artificers, 
Knight-errant  of  the  Newest  Age. 

The  poet  pales  in  memory  — 

Aloof  and  proud  and  book-bemused, 
His  Saxon  plainness  subtly  fused 

With  pomp  of  Norman  chivalry; 

His  ashes  in  the  Abbey  lie 
Aristocratic  in  their  place, 
But  all  that  lives  of  him  has  grace 

Of  beautiful  democracy ; 

Near  mouldering  glaive  and  oriflamme 
His  cerements  rest,  but  he,  unwound 
From  death,  by  human  love  is  crowned 

With  friendship  in  memoriam; 

By  many  a  far  and  alien  beach 

He  seeks  the  holy  grail  of  song, 
Hailed  by  the  Saxon-thinking  throng 

The  laureate  of  English  speech. 


20  TENNYSON 

m 

O  Song  —  O  Grail  of  man's  desire  ! 

O  living  Splendor,  never  sped ! 

Out  of  the  ashes  of  the  dead 
Rise,  rise  once  more  in  mystic  fire ! 

Reveal  for  us,  for  us,  reveal 

The  Singer  in  his  harness  clad, 
And  gird  him  forth  like  Galahad 

To  smite,  to  chasten  and  to  heal ; 

To  hallow  spear  and  spade  and  hod, 
To  wrestle  manhood  from  defeats, 
To  face  the  mighty  in  their  seats 

And  humble  greatness  before  God; 

To  be  the  bugle  of  his  race 

And  blazon  through  the  age  again 
Thy  music  in  the  hearts  of  men, 

Thy  beauty  in  the  market-place. 


THE  AIR  VOYAGE  UP  THE  HUDSON1 

LIKE  nothing  earthly,  on  awful  wings, 

It  burst  on  the  staring  million, 
Like  a  dream  of  ancient  dreadful  things 

In  the  dusk  of  the  time  reptilian. 

Our  hearts  beat  quick ;  we  spoke  not  aloud ; 

Our  minds  our  senses  dissuaded ; 
As  we  saw  the  bastions  of  bird  and  cloud 

By  the  vision  of  man  invaded. 

We  caught  our  breath,  as  we  watched  him  bound 
Where  the  air-billow  swirls  and  serries, 

And  the  shout  of  our  straining  hearts  is  drowned 
In  the  din  of  the  roaring  ferries. 

With  sliding  pinion  and  whizzing  prow  — 
His  sky-ship  the  sea  birds  scaring  — 

Like  a  thought  from  Liberty's  looming  brow, 
He  flashes  and  soars  in  his  daring. 

1  Stanzas  written  on  witnessing,  from  Battery  Park, 
the  first  flight  made  by  Wilbur  Wright  in  his  aeroplane 
from  Governor's  Island  to  Grant's  Tomb  and  back,  on 
the  morning  of  October  4,  1909,  during  the  Hudson- 
Fulton  celebrations. 

21 


22     THE   AIR   VOYAGE   UP   THE   HUDSON 

He  has  flashed ;  he  is  gone :   only  fancy  aids 
Our  eyes  where  the  haze  grows  hoarer : 

The  Ages  look  up  from  the  Palisades, 

That  looked  down  on  the  Dutch  explorer. 

But  what  of  their  dreams  —  those  gray  steel  hulks 
Deep-moored  in  the  river  below  him, 

With  the  loins  of  a  nation  girt  in  their  bulks  ? 
In  their  iron  hearts,  do  they  know  him  ? 

Do  their  deadly  engines  twinge  with  a  doubt, 

A  dread  of  this  thing  ethereal, 
That  hides  in  its  plumes  the  earliest  scout 

Of  the  armies  and  navies  aerial  ? 

And  what  of  their  hearts  —  that  human  throng  ? 

Do  they  hail  in  this  creature  regal 
The  harbinger  of  dirge,  or  of  song? 

A  vulture,  or  an  eagle  ? 


He  tacks ;  he  returns :   the  news  is  blown 
On  the  winds  of  a  city's  wonder: 

He  comes,  in  the  braying  megaphone, 
He  comes,  on  Manhattan's  thunder; 

He  looms  once  more  by  the  swarming  bluffs  • 
A  bird  of  marshes  gigantic  — 

And  slants  on  the  slumbering  mist,  and  luffs 
To  his  nest  by  the  booming  Atlantic. 


CHORAL  SONG  FOR  THE  NEW 
THEATRE l 

(Written  to  be  sung  to  music  from  Gounod's  Redemption.) 

AWAKE  !  awake  !  awake  ! 

Spirits  of  Aspiration ! 

And  hasten  to  renew 

Your  ministering  vows : 

For  lo !  the  Prince  of  Faery 

Returns  within  your  walls, 

Back  from  his  ancient  bright  dominions : 

Awake  !  awake  !  awake  ! 

For  he  is  crowned  again. 

But  who  is  he,  the  Prince  of  Faery  ? 

Of  Hellas  he  was  god,  a  swan  he  was  in  Avon. 

But  who  is  he,  the  Prince  of  Faery  ? 

Of  little  children  lord,  of  men  and  angels 

master : 
Within  the  human  mind  he  rules  the  world. 

1  Sung  by  members  of  the  Metropolitan  Opera  Com 
pany,  at  the  ceremony  of  the  laying  of  the  corner-stone 
of  the  New  Theatre,  New  York,  December  15,  1908,  and 
also  at  the  opening  ceremonies,  November  6,  1909. 
23 


ODE  TO  THE  AMERICAN  UNIVERSITIES  J 

HARVARD    PHI    BETA    KAPPA    POEM,    1908 

I 

ONCE  more  amid  her  mountains  and  her  seas 
American,  dream-startled  Liberty 
Stares    round    her,  listening.     From    her    mystic 
limbs 

Sleep  like  a  garment  slips ; 

Between  her  lips 
Bright  wonder  trembles  momentarily; 

About  her  knees 

Her  ancient  streams  and  shores,  innumerable 
With    navies    and    strange    peoples,   raise    new 

hymns 

In  her  immortal  name.     Once  more  she  lifts 
Her  head  in  proud  resistance,  beautiful 
Rebellion :   yet  not  now  with  martial  frown 

To  glare  through  scorching  rifts 
Of  cannon  smoke,  smiting  her  foemen  down, 

1  Read  in  Sanders  Theatre,  Cambridge,  June  25,  1908. 
24 


ODE  TO  THE  AMERICAN  UNIVERSITIES     25 

But  now,  with  gaze  upturned  in  the  deep  sky 
Whose  timeless  arc  reveals  each  mortal  blur 
Of  her  bright  image  overhanging  her, 
To  purify  herself,  for  her  least  worshipper. 

II 

Ours  is  an  age  of  mutability, 

A  threshold  radiant  yet  sinister 

Toward  strange  horizons,  where  the  eternal  hills 

Of  ancient  law  heave,  and  sink  shuddering  under, 

Bursting  in  giant  surf  against  the  base 

Of  vastier  summits,  newly  starred  with  wonder; 

And  though  that  portent  thrills 
Our  thoughts  with  dread,  or  joy,  here  is  our  place; 
Here  we  must  look  our  common  future  in  the  face. 

Necessity  sounds  no  alarms,  and  time 
No  tocsin  for  his  patient  siege.     To-day 
No  detonation  of  deep  Sumter's  gun, 
Nor  lightning  musket-flash  of  Lexington, 

Nor  jangled  steeple-chime, 
Ushers  our  holy  war;  but  silent-shod, 

And  in  the  secret  way 

Of  human  hearts,  where  in  the  sordid  street 
The  modern  slave  and  master  dumbly  meet 

And  in  the  other's  eyes 


26     ODE  TO  THE  AMERICAN  UNIVERSITIES 

Each,  unaware,  beholds  the  eyes  of  God, 

That  ever  after  burn  and  scrutinize 

The  vitals  of  his  soul ;   or  where,  defiled, 

The  starless  miner  barters  his  own  child 

For   mordant    drink   to   quench   his   questioning 

mind; 

Or  where,  behind 
The  squandered  toil  of  millions,  the  impeach'd 

man 

Puts  out  his  life,  to  shut  away  the  shame; 
Still  silent  as  the  flame 
Of  serpent  fire  through  autumn  grass, 
The  radiant  revolution  creeps, 
Impregnating  the  nation's  prone  morass 
With  seed  Promethean 
That,  kindling,  leaps 

Forth  on  the  peaks    of  life,  aspiring  whence  it 
came. 

What  is  that  seed  ?  —  that  living  fire  ? 

What  mystic  name, 

What  secret  shrine, 

Revealed,  sets  free 
That  sweet  and  awful  Potency, 
Which  wears,  'neath  blasphemy  and  ire, 
'Neath  pain  and  sin  and  hate  and  blood, 
The  hallowed  smile  of  brotherhood  ? 


ODE  TO  THE  AMERICAN  UNIVERSITIES     27 

A  myriad  names,  a  myriad 
Shrines  its  worshippers  have  had, 

Yet  whatsoever  god  men  call  it  by, 
Still  the  divine 

Democracy  of  man,  while  man  is,  cannot  die. 

Hearken  how  far 

The  high  persuasion 

Of  our  renascence  thunders  !     Groping,  dumb, 
Bowed  with  old  burdens  of  a  continent, 
Branded  with  immemorial  scar 
Of  sheik  and  king  and  khan  and  czar, 

They  come  —  they  come, 
Filing,  in  vast  and  orderly  invasion, 
The  planks  of  Ellis  Island.     Who  shall  tell 
What  numbers  thronged  the  fields  where  great 

Martel 

Marshalled  his  hordes,  or  old  Arminius 
O'erwhelmed  the  Roman  legions  ?  —  Gaul  and 

Hun, 

Vandal  and  Visigoth,  behold,  for  us 
To-day  the  humdrum  agent,  one  by  one, 

By  sex  and  ages, 

Chalk-marks  and  checks,  and  down  the  bright 
steel  cages 

Passes  the  hybrid  clans, 
Whose  migratory  hosts  pour  forth  —  Americans. 


28     ODE  TO  THE  AMERICAN  UNIVERSITIES 

III 

Presides  et  socii  collegiorum ! 

Masters  and  scholars  of  the  chosen  places ! 

I  ask  of  you  —  to  whom 
Shall  those  inchoate  freemen,  dazzled  races, 
Turn  in  their  promised  land  for  leadership? 

Who  shall  equip 

Their  hope  with  discipline,  their  nescience 
With  light,  their  sudden  zeal  with  reverence  ? 

I  ask  of  you  —  to  whom 
The  amazed  Republic,  gazing  on  this  skein 

And  stuff  of  destiny, 

Pied-shot  with  human  passion,  joy  and  pain, 
Shall  look  to  engineer  the  awful  loom, 
So  that  within  the  fabric  of  the  state 
The  large  ideal  of  the  intricate 
Design  shall  blazon,  bold  and  beautiful, 
The  gracious  lineaments  of  Liberty  ? 

Flower-sprung  from  mesas  of  the  prairied  land, 
Star-strewn  along  the  hills  and  by  the  seas  — 
The  quiet-bastioned  citadels  of  peace 
And  gunless  fortresses  of  freedom  —  stand 
The  universities.     No  breastwork  heaves 
Its  brow  in  menace  near;  the  ivied  gates 
Rise  moatless ;   from  the  campus  and  the  eaves 
Perennial  youthhood  chimes;   and  all  awaits 


ODE  TO  THE  AMERICAN  UNIVERSITIES     29 

The  coming  conqueror.     Yet  inward  shrined, 

And  panoplied 

With  arms  more  glorious  than  glaive  of  Cid 
Or  Charlemagne,  the  quenchless  human  mind 

Sits  inexpugnable; 
While  far  around,  from  swarming  cities  and  wide 

swards, 

Murmur    the     vague,     aspiring,     passion-driven 
hordes. 

Let  us  not  vest  with  visionary  seal 
Of  sanctity  the  individual. 

Wherever  among  men 
The  brave  and  reasonable  citizen 

Thinks  for  the  common  weal 
And  speaks  his  thought,  there  the  Republic  speaks, 
Yet,  if  unanswered,  speaks  in  vain. 

For  ours  is  a  day  of  coalition :  this 

Our  people,  viewed  with  the  perspective  eye 

Of  revery,  appears  a  titan  group 

Of  powers  compositive,  vast  Dramatis 

Personse,  plying  their  immortal  tasks, 

'Neath  which  their  Atlantean  sinews  stoop, 

In  that  high  Comedy  Serene 
Wherein  the  Evolutionary  will  immasks; 
And  there,  amid  those  titan  forms  of  Man  — 


30    ODE  TO  THE  AMERICAN  UNIVERSITIES 

Their  torses  poised  proud 

In  athlete  ease,  their  foreheads  pensive-bow'd  — 
The  Spirits  of  the  Universities 
Enact  their  corporate  roles  American. 

Therefore  to  you,  lords  of  the  large  demesne 
Of  learning,  scholars  of  well-earned  degrees, 
To  you,  in  your  confederated  power, 
Preeminently,  the  Republic  turns 
And  charges  you,  by  your  just  love  of  her, 

To  lead,  to  pilot  and  uplift 
Her  generations,  and  administer, 

With  the  most  holy  shrift 
Of  reason  and  Time's  slow  amassed  dower, 
Her  bright  communion  to  the  multitude. 

Toward  you,  in  whose  calm  hands  her  chalice 

burns 

With  beauty  strange,  how  many  thirst-imbued 
Gaze,  yearning !    Not  alone  on  your  own  walls, 
Wherein  your  chosen  meet  —  your  shadow  falls 
Also  on  alien  thresholds,  thrown  across 
The  nation's  childhood,  by  the  increasing  glow 
Of  truth  that  flares  beyond  you.     As  you  sow, 
So  shall  the  lesser  seekers  harvest  —  dross 
Or  substance.     In  responsibility, 
You  are  the  true  inheritors  of  kings 


ODE  TO  THE  AMERICAN  UNIVERSITIES     31 

Whose  sceptres  now  lie  impotent,  your  halls  — 
The  sovran  courts  of  the  democracy; 

And  by  the  royalty 
Conferred  of  patient  high  imaginings, 

Your  first  prerogative  — 
And  prime  efficiency  —  is  leadership. 

IV 

Who  is  the  scholar-leader?    What  is  he 

Whose  learning  shows  the  unlearned  best  to  live  ? 

There  be,  who  —  finger  hard  on  lip  — 
Pore  lifelong,  with  laborious  glass, 
On  nature's  enigmatic  heart, 
Dissecting  shrewdly,  part  by  part, 
To  store  her  secrets  in  their  scrip, 
Heedless  of  human  love  and  art, 
Or  how  the  passionate  generations  pass. 

Others  there  are  who,  moved  no  less 

To  explore  that  mute  obscure  abysm, 
Make  of  their  probing  minds  a  prism 

Whose  many-sided  radiance 
Illumes  with  their  own  hearts  the  heart  of  Nature, 

Touching  her  darkest  feature 
With  revelation  for  man's  happiness, 

And  with  love's  couched  lance 
Wresting  from  Science  a  new  Humanism. 


32     ODE  TO  THE  AMERICAN  UNIVERSITIES 

Such  is  the  scholar  liberal :   for  him, 

Not  knowledge  which  ignores  the  Whole, 
But  knowledge  grafted  in  the  soul 

Is  scholarship;   to  esteem 
His  calling  justly  is  to  see 

That  culture  is  proficient  sympathy. 

For  all  that  issues  beautiful 
From  dim  retort  and  crucible, 
And  makes  our  modern  day  to  seem 
Arabian  night  or  opiate  dream :  — 
Genii,  that  on  the  wireless  air 
Transport  within  imagined  waves 
The  cosmic  Echo  from  her  caves 
To  work  their  will,  or  from  the  stars 
Expound  the  mysteries  of  Mars, 
Or  in  earth's  rotting  shale  prepare 
The  alchemy  of  radium,  — 
All  powers,  articulate  or  dumb, 
Which  scholars  probe  and  sages  scan, 
Are  meaningless  except  to  Man  — 
To  urge  his  peace,  to  ease  his  pain, 

And  from  his  mind's  domain 
To  exorcise  the  lurking  Caliban. 

To  exorcise  !  —  Not  in  the  Middle  Age, 
With  Faust's  redemption,  did  the  devils  cease 
To  lure  great  doctors  to  their  tutelage, 


ODE  TO  THE  AMERICAN  UNIVERSITIES     33 

Whereby  to  lengthen  their  protracted  lease 
Of  the  lewd  rabble's  gaping  ignorance : 
Still,  with  incessant  metamorphosis, 

The  monsters  hatch  and  hiss 

And,  breeding,  grow 

To  honor'd  stature  in  the  imperiPd  state, 
Where  the  true  scholar  still  is  Prospero, 

Making  their  misshaped  natures  dance 
Attendance  on  his  master  vision :   So 
To  humble  monsters  to  the  use  of  men, 
The  foremost  scholar  is  first  citizen. 

He,  when  the  rank  broods  teem  and  generate 

Their  giant  seed, 

That  prowl  the  rich  land  with  impunity, 
Where  corporate   greatness   stoops   to  cormorant 

greed, 
And  that  one    bulk,  much-mouth'd  and  subtle- 

gin'd, 

The  unsated  Minotaur,  Monopoly, 
Extorts  his  toll  in  the  meek  nation's  blood 

Of  boys  and  maidenhood,  — 
He  then,  the  scholar-leader,  pores  not  stale 
Upon  his  book,  nor  peers  where  sits  the  wind 
In  the  golden  weathercock  on  Minos'  gate, 
But  prescient,  girds  his  clear  mind  all  in  mail, 
And  gathering  round  the  time's  unperished  youth, 


34     ODE  TO  THE  AMERICAN  UNIVERSITIES 

Apportions  his  bright  armory  of  truth 
And  points  what  right-aimed  blow  shall  make  the 
beast  disgorge. 

So  did  that  steadfast  captain  of  our  race  — 

A  storm-trained  scholar  —  stand  at  Valley  Forge 

With  all  the  gales  of  England  in  his  face, 

And  sharing  forth  his  visionary  arms 

Of  faith  with  his  shorn  comrades,  smiled,  and 

hurled 

Victory  through  disaster's  blind  alarms, 
And  wrought  with  fearless  mind  the  future  of  a 

world. 

V 

O  beautiful  and  spacious  one, 

My  Country  !      Spirit  free, 
Who  floatest  wild  on  that  lone  eagle's  wings 
Fledged  in  the  fiery  heart  of  Washington, 
And  fed  on  heart's  blood  of  each  dauntless  son 
Of  that  strong  father,  how  exceedingly 

Fair  is  thine  image,  when 

First  the  least-born  of  men 

Burns  with  thy  story  !     Then 
Thou  art  a  presence  never  darkling:   night 

Shrouding  thy  solemn  flight, 

Sprinkles,  with  hoary  rite, 


ODE  TO  THE  AMERICAN  UNIVERSITIES     35 

Stars  on  thy  plumage;  morn, 

Ere  on  the  cottage  thorn 

Scarce  the  shy  warbler  sings, 

Fills  all  familiar  things 

With  thy  far  glory ;   dreams 
Of  thee  at  evening  haunt  the  hermit  thrush, 
And  in  his  ecstasy's  pure  after-hush, 
High  and  austerely  sweet,  thine  immanent  eagle 
screams. 

So  by  the  large  compulsion  of  that  Presence 

I  make  this  invocation; 

And  by  the  might  of  that  dear  name,  whose  es 
sence 

The  staling  tongue  of  usage  cannot  taint  — 
America  —  I  speak,  that  I  may  stir 
You,  her  far-ranging  universities, 

Through  glad  constraint 

Of  love  you  owe  to  her, 
Henceforward  to  conjoin  your  destinies 

In  grander  federation. 

VI 

Not  adversaries  in  the  scrambling  street 
Of  commerce,  need  your  nobler  wills  compete 
For  numbers  and  for  names.     A  saner  law 
Moves  your  cooperation,  and  the  awe 


36     ODE  TO  THE  AMERICAN  UNIVERSITIES 

Of  that  shall  fix  a  sound  stability 
At  the  base  of  civic  freedom.     Strong  must  be 
The  scholar  in  himself.     Far  better  were  it 
Your  halls  stood  empty  and  their  corridors 
Silent,  than  that  the  youth  who  from  your  doors 
Go  forth  to  breed  the  nation,  should  inherit 

The  sowings  of  that  spirit 

Which  bows  the  mind  to  serve  the  vulgar  mood, 
Or  truckles  to  the  man  that  owns  the  multitude. 

It  cannot  be.     Never,  till  now,  before  — 

In  age  of  Plato  or  of  Abelard, 

In  empire  or  republic,  linking  shore 

With  shore  by  aspiration's  viewless  chain  — 

Has  your  high  calling  held  the  fair  regard 

And  faith  of  one  vast  people.     Not  in  vain 

Their  faith  abides  in  you.     The  taint  which  blinds 

The  weak  shall  not  be  yours.     Your  yards  and 

halls 

Still  with  expanding  splendor  shall  be  filled 
By  the  strong  magnet  of  the  sane  ideal, 

And  to  the  common  weal 
Shall  speed  their  generations  of  glad  youth 
Forth  in  the  land  —  alumni  of  the  guild 
Of  leadership,  the  minute-men  of  truth, 
Whose  muskets  are  their  uncorrupted  minds, 
Clean  for  their  country  where  her  service  calls. 


ODE  TO  THE  AMERICAN  UNIVERSITIES     37 

VII 

Nobly  our  world  renews,  even  as  in  ages  gone. 
Man's  eras  have  their  vernal  equinox 
No  less  than  nature's :   Still,  on  that  wild  dawn 
When  the  high  winds,  unleashed,  no  longer  fawn 
At  Winter's  knees,  but  lift  his  sparse-blown  locks 
In  haggard  wrack  —  there,  on  the  looming  hills, 
Sharp  with  unearthly  light,  the  sudden  flocks 
Show  radiant,  and  on  the  vista'd  sills 
Of  Spring,  earth's  visionary  beauty  starts 
Revealed :   Not  otherwise  in  human  hearts 
Recurrent,  after  seasons  numb  and  blind, 
Freshly  the  ancient  Loveliness  reveals 

The  love  of  our  own  kind, 
Rekindling  in  our  race  the  raptures  of  the  mind. 


PROLOGUE    TO    THE    SAINT-GAUDENS 
MASQUE  1 

PERFORMED   AT   ASPET   IN   CORNISH 

Enter  IRIS 

IRIS 

FRESH  from  the  courts  of  dewy-colored  eve 
Jove  summons  me  before  you.  Who  I  am 
And  why  he  bids  me  here  I  must  declare. 

1  In  June,  1905,  to  celebrate  the  twentieth  anniversary 
of  the  founding  of  the  Cornish  Colony  by  Augustus  Saint- 
Gaudens,  an  outdoor  masque  was  devised  and  performed 
by  his  neighbors  in  a  pine  grove  at  Aspet,  his  New  Hamp 
shire  home.  In  the  Masque,  written  by  Mr.  Louis  Evan 
Shipman,  more  than  seventy  persons  took  part,  among 
whom  were  some  forty  artists  and  writers  of  craftsmanly 
repute,  who  enacted  r61es  of  Greek  deities  and  demigods. 

About  twilight,  the  sculptor  with  his  family  and  some 
hundreds  of  guests  were  seated  in  front  of  a  green-gray 
curtain,  suspended  between  two  pines,  on  which  hung 
great  gilded  masks,  executed  by  Mr.  Maxfield  Parrish. 
Close  by,  secreted  artfully  behind  evergreens,  members 
of  the  Boston  Symphony  Orchestra  awaited  the  baton 
signal  of  Mr.  Arthur  Whiting,  conductor  and  composer 
of  the  music. 

Then,  in  the  softened  light,  emerged  from  between  the 
folds  of  the  curtain  the  tall  maidenly  figure  of  Iris,  in 
many-hued  diaphanous  veils,  holding  in  one  hand  a  staff 
of  living  fleur-de-lis.  Iris,  enacted  by  Miss  Frances 
Grimes,  the  sculptress,  spoke  the  accompanying  Pro 
logue. 

The  three  allusions  to  works  by  Saint-Gaudens  refer, 
of  course,  to  the  Shaw  Memorial  Bas-relief,  in  Boston,  the 
Sherman  Equestrian  Statue,  in  New  York,  and  the  Adams 
Memorial,  in  Washington. 

38 


PROLOGUE   TO   A   MASQUE  39 

My  home  is  half-light;  you   have   watched   me 

oft 

Through  closing  lids  at  noontide,  or  at  dusk, 
Moving  between  the  daylight  and  your  dreams, 
A  shape  illusory.     Whether  I  pause 
Midway  my  quivering  arc,  that  spans  the  roar 
And  tumbling  prisms  of  sheer  Niagara, 
Or  by  the  ferny  banks  of  Blowmedown 
Trellis  my  hair  with  braided  fleur-de-lis, 
Still  I  am  Iris,  and  my  mission  is 
To  shatter  the  white  beam  of  garish  day 
Into  a  thousand  mellower  tints  of  twilight, 
Spinning  across  the  sceptic  eyes  of  reason 
Fine  rainbow-films  of  fancy.     Such,  then,  I. 
But  whence,  emerging  from  the  curtained  wood 
Of  Aspet,  on  this  longest  summer  eve, 
While  yet  the  veerie  rings  his  vesper  chimes, 
I  have  made  journey  hither,  hearken ! 

Late, 

Below  the  gilded  state-house  by  the  bay, 
Sitting  his  horse  in  proud  simplicity, 
I  left  a  young  commander;   thronged  beneath 
His  lifted  brow,  clouded  with  battle  dreams, 
The  eager  Ethiop  faces  onward  surged ; 
No  sound  arose  from  all  their  trampling  feet, 
But  the  imagined  drum-beats  rolled  in  bronze. 


40  PROLOGUE   TO   A   MASQUE 

From  these  I  passed  to  where  the  human  hives 
Shadow  the  stars  from  the  Metropolis, 
Whence,  turning  homeward  from  the  hell  of  war, 
Another  hero,  scarr'd  and  old,  there  rode; 
And  at  his  bridle-rein,  in  maiden  awe, 
Went  Victory  —  with  pity  in  her  eyes. 

A  third  and  Sibyl  form,  remote  and  mute, 

Brooding  alone  beside  a  secret  grave, 

Asked  with  unopening  eyes,  "  What  means  it  all  ?  " 

From  these  imagined  and  immortal  forms 
To  him,  O  mortals,  who  imagined  them, 
And  fixed  his  revery  in  stone  and  bronze, 
I  come  to  render  tribute,  not  of  praise 
Superfluous,  but  playful  badinage 
And  mock-Olympic  mummery,  whereby 
If  these  shall  cause  the  elvish  Gallic  smile 
To  twitch  his  lip,  or  stir  his  blarney  laugh, 
The  mock-Olympians  will  die  content. 

Behold,  then,  by  the  enchantment  of  this  staff 
A  magic  transformation :   not  such  change 
As  once  my  goddess  sister  Circe  wrought  — 
Circe,  whose  spell  debased  the  forms  divine 
Of  men  to  bristled  shapes  of  snout  and  horn: 
Mine  is  a  charm  reverse,  that  lifts,  not  lowers, 
By  power  whereof  all  neighbor  Jacks  and  Jills 


PROLOGUE   TO   A   MASQUE  41 

That  tug  their  art-pails  up  these  pasture  slopes 
Of  Cornish  are  converted  here  to  strut 
In  guise  of  antic  gods  and  demigods. 

[!RIS  waves  her  staff,  music  sounds  from  the  grove.] 

Hark  now !     'Tis  they,  who  clamor  to  begin 
Their  frolic  masque  of  satyr,  muse,  and  faun, 
And  on  the  shrine  of  mirth  make  sacrifice 
In  honor  of  their  only  pagan  saint. 

[!RIS  withdraws  between  the  curtains:  the  music 
grows  louder,  then  dies  away.  The  curtains, 
dividing,  open  upon  the  Masque.] 


A    CHRISTMAS    CAROL 

KEEP  closer  to  the  wall ;  stop  crawling ;  wait. 
We  have  our  orders.     Hold  the  dynamite. 
I  hear  their  sentry  cough.     The  moon  burns  white 
Behind  the  battlements,  and  cuts  each  one  — 
Turret  and  tower  —  an  inky  silhouette, 
Like  paper  castle-tops  I  used  to  trace 
With  scissors  as  a  boy.     Step  softly !     Place 
The  bomb  here,  underneath  the  garrison. 
Now  if  their  souls  are  dreaming  of  hell-fire, 
This   will    not   wake   them.     Midnight!    That's 

the  choir 
Of  children  hailing  the  Nativity. 

What  are  ye  that  walk  the  night 

Heaven's  will  divining? 
Shining  are  your  mantles  white 

And  your  staffs  are  shining. 

Shepherds,  we  have  come  from  far 
Dark  and  danger  scorning: 

We  have  seen  our  King  His  star 
By  the  gates  of  morning. 
42 


A   CHRISTMAS   CAROL  43 

Come  now,  this  is  no  time  for  hands  to  quake; 

On  this  one  breach  depends  the  victory, 

A  nation's  honor,  and  her  destiny. 

And  these,  who  lie  so  unsuspectingly 

In  sleep,  not  one  of  them  must  ever  wake 

This  side  of  — 

What  is  He  whose  star  ye  seek, 

Toilsomely  and  slowly? 
He  is  monarch  of  the  meek. 

Regent  of  the  lowly. 

Wise  men,  seek  another  land, 
Shun  our  lord  his  greeting: 

For  we  perish  at  his  hand, 
And  our  lambs  are  bleating. 

What  a  devilish  close  call ! 
There  creeps  the  sentry  on  the  shadow-wall 
Like  a  black  ant.     Quick,  now  —  the  fuse  ! 

What  are  ye  who  knock  by  night 

On  my  palace  portals? 
Triple  wreaths  of  silver  light 

Crown  you  like  immortals. 

Herod,  from  the  east  we  bring 

Fine  and  lordly  treasure. 
Where  is  He  that  born  is  King? 

We  would  do  him  pleasure. 


44  A   CHRISTMAS   CAROL 

These  your  gifts  uncover  them, 
Myrrh  and  spice,  before  me. 

Lo,  I  am  Jerusalem! 
Bow  ye  down,  adore  me! 

King,  your  shepherds  wretchedly 

Starve  without  your  city. 
You  Jerusalem  may  be, 

But  our  Lord  is  Pity. 

Quick,  fool ! 

This  is  our  country's  job,  and  you  her  tool. 
What  are  you  waiting  for  ?     You  want  to  think 
Before  you  kill  ?    You  dream  that  love  may  link 
All  born  of  woman  ?     Fool,  are  we  the  first 
To  live  in  mothers'  memories  accurst, 
Or  in  the  little  children's  helplessness  ? 
These  men,  like  us,  know  gentle  eyes  that  bless 
Their  goings  and  homecomings,  baby  hands 
That  reach,  fine  feet  that  dart,  at  their  commands. 
What,  then  ?     This  is  not  murder ;  this  is  war. 
We  are  not  men,  but  patriots.     Think  no  more: 
The  fuse  is  lighted ;  run  !    Run  for  the  shore  ! 

What  are  ye  that  screen  your  eyes 

From  the  awful  burning? 
Look  where  'neath  His  star  He  lies, 

Nestled  by  her  yeaming. 


A   CHRISTMAS   CAROL  45 

Ye  that  saw  His  glory  shine, 
What  were  dark  and  danger? 

Blessed  ye  that  make  your  shrine 
Mother,  Child,  and  manger. 

Now  the  Lord  of  Love  — 

Look  back  !     Look  back !     How  the  torn  earth- 
clouds  blot 

The  stars,  and  the  far  hilltop  heaves  the  roar ! 
Ah,  Merry  Christmas!    Almost  I'd  forgot. 


THE   DEATH   OF  VERESTCHAGIN l 

WITH  gaze  serene  and  brow  of  silver  rime, 

He  watched  the  up-staring  sea  and   reeling 

land 
Converge,  as  limned  beneath  the  veteran  hand 

That  last,  fell  sketch  of  war  was  traced  sublime ; 

But  even  in  the  act  his  pencil  ruthlessly 

Was  snatched  away,  where  —  blasting  all  his 

view  — 
The  inexorable  Artist  stood,  and  drew 

The  awful  masterpiece  —  reality. 

And  now  the  silver  rime  is  on  the  wave, 
And  Verestchagin  sleeps  with  Makarof, 
And  calm,    above    the   red    brine's    eddying 
trough, 

The  eyes  of  Christ  and  Buddha  guard  his  grave. 

1  Vassili  Verestchagin,  the  Russian  painter  of  war 
themes,  while  sketching  a  naval  battle  off  Port  Arthur, 
sank  in  the  warship  Petropavlovsk,  with  Admiral  Makarof, 
April  4,  1904. 

46 


SHIRLEY   COMMON1 

NOT  ours,  upon  the  house-tops,  here  to  claim 
Battles  and  heroes  of  historic  scene, 
A  century  and  fifty  years  of  fame :  — 
Our  boast  is  silence  and  this  day's  serene. 

The  loud  circumference  of  jangling  lands, 
Conflict  and  craft  and  wrong  surround  us;   still 
Shy  in  her  orchard-wildness  Shirley  stands: 
A  hushed  spectator  on  her  mapled  hill. 

Here  to  her  simple  festival  she  calls 
Her  folk  home  —  yet  not  all :  Where  are  they  now, 
The  Pilgrim  race  that  piled  her  corn-field  walls, 
And  served  the  Lord  with  patience  and  a  plough  ? 

The  hardy  citizens  that  now  are  sod 
They  may  not  hear  her  summons  home;   and  yet 
The  elm-hid  belfry  nestles  toward  their  God, 
And  we,  who  gather  here,  do  not  forget. 

1  Read  at  the  one  hundred  and  fiftieth  anniversary 
of  the  Town  of  Shirley,  Massachusetts,  July  30,  1903,  in 
the  First  Parish  Meeting-House. 
47 


48  SHIRLEY   COMMON 

For  still  the  sights  familiar  to  their  eyes 
Are  dear  to  ours :   the  spires  of  Groton  blaze 
Their  weathercocks  from  Gallows-Hill's  sunrise, 
And  the  long  slopes  of  Harvard  slant  in  haze; 

And  still,  at  night,  the  bittern  booms  to  rest, 
The  secret  whip-poor-will  complains  afar; 
And  still  Wachusett  marshals  in  the  west 
The  sunset  and  his  solitary  star. 

Here,  then,  let  thoughts  be  memories;    let  our 

pride 

Be  the  untainted  loveliness,  which  is 
Our  Shirley's  dower  on  woods  and  pastures  pied ; 
Let  our  ambition,  even  as  hers,  be  this :  — 

Unenvious,  to  win  the  envied  bays 
Of  nature's  health  and  honest  common  sense; 
And,  by  the  peace  of  sane,  inglorious  days, 
To  earn  the  unrepute  of  innocence. 


ISAAK   WALTON   IN   MAIDEN   LANE 

IN  that  Manhattan  alley  long  yclept, 

With  gentle  olden  music,  Maiden  Lane, 

Where  sick  and  sad-eyed  Traffic  scarce  has  slept 

Even  at  midnight,  in  her  lust  for  gain. 

Rolling  in  restive  pain 

Through  the  stern  vigil  of  a  century, 

There,  mid  the  din  of  harsh  reality  — 

The  newsboy's  shriek,  car's  clang  and  huckster's 

chaff, 

The  cobble's  roar,  and  the  loud  drayman's  laugh, 
And  the  dull  stare, 
The  inhuman,  hunted  glare 
Of  the  faces  —  the  gray  faces 
Of  Mammon's  stark-mad  races, 
Sordid  and  slattern, 
Modish  and  tattern, 
Loveless  in  their  misery  — 
There,  in  the  midst  of  all, 
Seated  upon  a  stall, 

Musing  on  meadows,  Isaak,  I  met  thee !  — 

B  49 


50     ISAAK   WALTON   IN   MAIDEN   LANE 

How  my  heart  stopped  for  too  much  happiness, 
To  meet  thee  there  in  that  maelstrom  of  men, 
Benignant,  wise  and  calm !    Ah,  gently  then 
Came  back,  in  fancy's  dress, 
All  that  of  old  was  sweet, 
Serene  and  fair,  to  grace  the  garish  street. 
Musing  on  meadows  now  in  Maiden  Lane, 
The  turbid  current  surging  at  my  side 
Became  the  flow  of  Thames'  sequestered  tide, 
The  newsboy's  cry  waned  to  a  curlew's  call, 
The  jangling  pedlar  tended  tinkling  sheep 
Along    green    hedgerows;  even    the    drayman's 

brawl 

Sweetened  to  an  old  soliloquy,  till  all 
That  strident  world  has  chastened  to  a  sleep 
Where,  in  a  twilit  eddy  of  my  dream, 
Thine  image,  Isaak,  pored  upon  a  bream. 


THE  SISTINE  EVE 

FRAGMENTS  OF  AN  ORATORIO 
WRITTEN  FOR  THE  BEGINNING 
OF  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY 


PLAN 

OVERTURE 

PRELUDE 
FIRST  CANTO:    The  Birth  of  Eve 

FIRST  INTERLUDE 
SECOND  CANTO:    The  Temptation  of  Eve 

SECOND  INTERLUDE 
THIRD  CANTO  :    The  Birth  of  Man 


52 


PRESENCES  * 

SPEAKING  PRESENCES  :    The  Sistine  Spirit 

The  Spirit  of  the  Vatican 

SOLO  PRESENCES:  Adam 

The  Persian  Sibyl 

The  Cumcean  Sibyl 

The  Delphic  Sibyl 

Judith 

Goliath 

Jonas 

Jeremiah 

Isaiah 

The  Expelling  Angel 

Eve 

CHORAL  PRESENCES  :      The  Cornice  Cherubim 
Symbolic  Figures 
Botticelli's  Women 
Shapes     in     "The    Last 
Judgment " 

SCENE 
The  Sistine  Chapel,  Rome 

TIME 

Midnight,  before  the  Dawn  of  1901 
High  pontifical  mass  is  being  celebrated.     Car 
dinals  and  prelates  in  splendid  vestments,  assembled. 

1  These  Dramatis  Personce  are  figures  in  the  paintings 
by  Michelangelo  and  Botticelli  on  the  ceiling  and  walls  of 
the  Sistine  Chapel. 

53 


"Laforza  d*  un  bel  volto  al  del  mi  sprona 
[Ch'  altro  in  terra  non  e  che  mi  diletti] 
E  vivo  ascendo  tra  gli  spirti  eletti, 
Grazia  ch'  ad  uom  mortal  raro  si  dona. 

SI  ben  col  suofattor  V  opra  consuona, 
Ch'  a  lui  mi  levo  per  divin  concetti, 
E  quivi  informo  i  pensier  tutti  e  i  detti, 
Ardendo,  amando  per  gentil  persona. 

Onde,  se  mai  da  due  begli  occhi  il  guardo 
Torcer  non  so,  conosco  in  lor  la  luce 
Che  mi  mosira  la  via  ch'  a  Dio  mi  guide. 
E  se  nel  lume  loro  acceso  io  ardo, 
Nel  nobil  foco  mio  dolce  riluce 
La  gioia  che  nel  cielo  eterna  ride" 

MICHELANGELO  BUONARROTI;  Sonetto  III. 


54 


OVERTURE 

A    VOICE    FROM   THE    CHAPEL    CEILING 

SIBYLS  and  prophets  of  undying  art, 
Awake  !  for  Buonarrotti's  golden  dome 
Is  as  an  angel's  passing-bell,  to  toll  — 
On  midnight's  starry,  tingling  silentness  — 
The  interring  of  an  Age.     Wake  and  behold  ! 
They  bear  her  toward  the  never-shutting  doors 
Which  fearful  mortals  screen  with  draperies 
To  bar  the  eternal  night.  —  Lo,  she  has  passed 
With  bead  and  psalm  and  solemn  catafalque, 
With  mitred  state,  and  pomp  episcopal, 
The  latest  of  the  sovereigns  of  time  — 
Nineteenth  among  the  entombed  centuries  — 
Has  sealed  forever  her  pregnant  lips,  and  lies 
Sculptured  in  the  cold  clay  of  history. 

But  thou,  O  live  new-crowned  Herculean  Age, 
Who  clingest  to  the  rugged  breast  of  Labor, 
Gazing  with  wonder  in  calm  Science'  eyes, 
While  Poesie,  with  warm  tears  on  her  cheek, 
Searches  thy  look,  in  passion  lost  of  pathos,  — 
Thou  titan  child  of  promise,  hail  to  thee ! 
55 


56  THE   SISTINE   EVE 

And  while  these  spirits,  with  their  serene  eyes 
Of  strifeless  beauty  and  strong  consummation 
[Spirits  that  pass  not  with  the  passing  age] 
Chant  o'er  thine  earliest  breathing,  may  the  hymn 
Which  they  shall  lift  in  prayer  to  the  first  Mother, 
Be  as  an  exhortation,  to  incite 
Thy  dreams  to  deeds  in  thy  maturer  days. 

And  now,  while  all  the  kneeling  prelates  pray, 
Spirits,  which  are  my  voices,  even  as  the  stops 
Are  to  the  lute,  awake  your  harmonies  ! 
And  celebrate  the  pain  and  the  desire, 
The  daring  and  the  victory,  of  her 
Who  set  love's  seal  upon  the  centuries. 

A    VOICE    FROM    THE   ALTAR 

Other?     Of  whom? 

THE  VOICE  FROM  THE  CEILING 
Awake,  Divinities! 

CHORUS  OF  PRESENCES 

Thou  whose  form  crepuscular 

Dawns  through  the  Sistine  heaven,  as  a  star 

Through  autumn  twilight,  beautiful 

Our  mother  Eve  — 


THE   SISTINE   EVE  57 

THE  VOICE  FROM  THE  ALTAR 

Peace,  painted  Forms !     Or  if  ye,  who  have  sat 

The  mute  spectators  of  my  solemn  Mass 

For  vague  centennials  of  memory, 

Now  ope  your  lips  inspired,  let  it  not  be 

To  chant  amid  these  rites  pontifical 

A  song  of  sacrilege.  —  Peace,  painted  Forms ! 

THE  VOICE  FROM  THE  CEILING 

What  art  thou  there  below,  with  taper  eyes 
Upraised  from  many  a  prostrate  cardinal, 
Who  puffest,  from  thy  vast,  seclusive  cowl, 
Columnar  storms  of  incense  ?     Whose  are  thine 
Imponderous   and   gilded   limbs,   which   show  — 
Between  the  silky  folds  of  surplices  — 
Like  pillars,  sculptured  in  a  pagan  shrine 
Or  pillaged  Coliseum  ? 

THE  VOICE  FROM  THE  ALTAR 

Answer  thou ! 

What  voice  is  thine,  visible  Aspiration, 
Whose  torse,  half  chiselled  from  cerulean  cloud, 
Outlifts  the  youthful  arm  indomitable 
Of  David,  who  at  Florence  guards  the  Palace, 
While  thy  rapt  brow  hurls  the  time-piercing  gaze 


58  THE   SISTINE   EVE 

Of  Moses,  in  St.  Peter's-of-the-Chains  ? 
What  is  thy  name,  majestic  Grace  of  Power? 

THE  VOICE  FROM  THE  CEILING 
I  am  the  Sistine  Spirit.     What  art  thou  ? 

THE  VOICE  FROM  THE  ALTAR 

The  Spirit  of  the  Vatican.     My  voice 
Is  the  peal'd  organ  of  perennial  Rome, 
And  even  as  those  sibyls  are  thy  stops 
So  all  these  red  and  golden  reeds  are  mine: 
But  now,  until  this  sacred  mass  be  said, 
Be  silent,  thou  !  or  let  our  requiem 
Be  sung  in  harmony. 

THE  SISTINE  SPIRIT 

What  discord  can 

Arise,  when  Power  prays  to  Innocence 
And  Beauty? 

THE  SPIRIT  OF  THE  VATICAN 

None ;  but  these,  thy  sensuous  choir, 
Dare  to  uplift  their  ritual  to  her  — 
To  her,  whose  fluent  and  unstable  mind, 
Impregned  with  lust  of  new  and  gloss  of  beauty, 
Became  a  fair  conception-place  for  Satan; 


THE   SISTINE   EVE  59 

To  Eve,  whose  folly  wrought  the  fall  of  Man, 
Yea,  all  the  dire  resultance  of  his  fall. 

THE  SISTINE  SPIRIT 

Man  never  fell.  The  inexorable  blow 
Of  the  Expelling  Angel  was  the  stroke 
Which  first  conferred  God's  knighthood  on  his 

nature, 

Kindling  that  anguish,  whereby  first  he  rose 
To  the  protective  stature  of  his  soul. 
This  Eve  first  knew  was  so,  when  she  loved  Adam. 
For  it  was  she  who  first,  feeling  herself 
A  child  of  God,  yearned  in  her  little  Eden, 
Yearned  for  herself  and  Adam,  as  true  lovers, 
For  aims  beyond  their  summer-day  self-seeking; 
And  even  while  she  grasped  the  fateful  fruit, 
Smiled  in  the  dream  of  nobler  mortal  sons 
Instead  of  an  idle  immortality,  — 
Smiled,  and  then  reached  the  fruit  to  Adam,  so 
To  share  with  him  the  awful  insurrection. 

THE  SPIRIT  OF  THE  VATICAN 

Preposterous  Spirit !  does  the  fallen  race 
Of  man  fulfil  her  dream  ?     Reveal  to  me 
A  nobler  mortal  son,  whose  angel  stature 
Exceeds  his  father  Adam's  ere  his  fall. 


60  '  THE   SISTINE   EVE 

THE  SISTINE  SPIRIT 

Spirit  of  earthward  vision,  —  even  I ! 
Yea,  these  and  I  and  more  than  us  are  Man. 
Our  exaltation  doth  confute  his  fall, 
And  build  again,  in  beauty,  art  and  love, 
Another  and  inviolable  Eden. 

Speak !  ye  serene  and  lofty  Presences, 
Delineations  of  inspired  Power ! 
Awake !  ye  children  of  a  child  of  God, 
And  hymn,  with  your  chromatic  harmonies, 
The  prelude  and  the  Trilogy  austere, 
Wherein  the  intuitive  grace  of  Woman's  love 
Enacts  the  eternal  Genesis  of  Man. 

THE  SPIRIT  OF  THE  VATICAN 
Strange  spirit,  they  are  silent. 


THE  SISTINE  SPIRIT 

Dost  thou  hear 


No  sound  ? 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  THE  VATICAN 

No  sound ;  save  only  the  faint  breath 
Of  cardinals,  that  tell  their  rosaries. 


THE   SISTINE   EVE  61 

THE  SISTINE  SPIRIT 

Hark  !  —  Hearest  thou  no  mural  melody  ? 

The  playing  organ  of  an  ocular  sense, 

The  hidden  choristers  of  lovely  hues, 

The  chant  of  heavenly  forms  ?  —  Once  more,  with 

all 

Thy  breathess  spirit  listening  in  thine  eyes  — 
No  music  ? 

THE  SPIRIT  OF  THE  VATICAN 
None. 


PRELUDE 

CHORUS  OF  PRESENCES 

O  ye  wise,  love  Beauty  !    All 

Ye  strong,  revere  her ! 
Through  passion's  starry  arches  thrill 
The  echoes  of  her  light  footfall ; 
The  worlds,  to  do  her  deathless  will, 

Draw  near  her. 

By  ways  divinely  sensuous, 
Her  viewless  form  entices  us 
'Mid  visions  pale  and  passionate 
To  kneel  beside  her  awful  gate; 
Where,  girt  with  song  and  silences, 
The  lonely  mind  her  mansion  is. 

The  innocent  obey  her  call, 

The  happy  know  her  dreamy  face 

And  hear  her; 

Despair  is  softened  by  her  grace, 
And  sorrow  is  her  worshipper. 
All  things  that  love  grow  like  to  her. 
O  ye  wise,  love  Beauty  !    All 

Ye  strong,  revere  her. 
62 


THE   SISTINE   EVE  63 

FIRST  SYMBOLIC  FIGURE 

Who  draws  his  face  beneath  a  cowl  of  cloud 
And  kneels  beside  the  altar,  dumb  and  bow'd  ? 

SECOND  FIGURE 

That  is  the  Spirit  of  the  Vatican: 
He  meditates  upon  the  Fall  of  Man. 

THIRD  FIGURE 

But  what  is  he,  with  countenance  beguiPd, 
That  smiles  upon  the  sleeping  titan-child  ? 

FOURTH  FIGURE 

The  Sistine  Spirit.  —  See  !    he  draws  away 
The  incense-curtain  from  our  holy  play. 

THE  FIGURES 

That  all  the  enactments  of  our  mural  stage 
May  pass  as  dreams  before  the  new-born  Age. 


FIRST   CANTO:    THE  BIRTH  OF  EVE 

SEMICHORUS  OF  SYMBOLIC  FIGURES 

How  like  a  garden  lies  the  world 

The  day  when  love  is  born; 
Strange  beauty  glows  upon  old  boughs, 

Strange  flowers  conceal  the  thorn; 
And  noon  and  night  are  tinged  with  light 

Of  unfamiliar  morn. 

CHORUS 

While  with  a  sense  —  as  though  a  god  were  near 

it- 
Of  noble  languor,  droops  the  lover's  spirit. 

SEMICHORUS 

So  float  the  trembling  hues  around 

This  maid  in  Paradise. 
A  joy,  a  reticence,  a  prayer, 

Clothe  with  bright  poesies 
Her  meek  limbs,  where  she  worships  there 

In  God  the  Father's  eyes. 
64 


THE   SISTINE   EVE  65 

CHORUS 

While,  drawing  deep  from  beauty's  opiate  springs 
A  sigh  of  power,  recumbent  Adam  sings : 

ADAM 

As  I  lay  in  Eden, 
Alone  with  Love  and  Lethargy, 
An  immortal  maiden 
Was  conceived  in  heaven 
And  born  to  me. 

All  that  I  had  dreamed 
And  sculptured  from  the  cloud-lit  skies,  — 

All  that  loved  and  gleamed 
And  sang,  in  my  encircling  Paradise,  — 

The  summit's  calm, 
The  flower's  voluptuousness, 

The  forest's  majesty, 
Night's  balm, 

The  morning's  victory 
And  twilight's  veiled  melodiousness  — 

Became  a  glowing  fire 

In  me  and  my  desire. 

As  I  lay  in  Eden, 

My  bosom  was  unfolded; 


66  THE   SISTINE   EVE 

And  an  elemental  Hand, 
Swift,  mysterious  and  grand, 

Culled  that  perfect  maiden  — 
With  all  that  my  wild  soul  contained 
Of  passion  peerless  and  unstained  — 

As  erst  by  heaven  she  was  moulded. 

And  the  maiden,  in  that  place, 
Grew  before  her  Maker's  face 
To  a  form  [methought  I  dreamed] 
Which  was  what  beauty  only  seemed. 
And  my  lax  arm  limply  pressed 
To  my  warm  and  unnerved  breast, 
And  my  brow  sank  in  a  swoon, 
And  I  smelt  the  scents  of  noon, 
And  I  felt  the  faint  winds  straying, 
And  my  heart  could  scarce  conceive 
What  the  Father's  Voice  was  saying: 
"Adam,  behold  thine  Eve!" 

A  FIGURE 

Hush  !  —  He  is  silent.     Spirits,  he  has  swooned ; 
And  from  his  breast  bright  Eve  has  flowered  forth ; 
As  when  the  passion  of  the  nightingale 
Thrills  and  expands  through  his  eternal  arches, 
Recumbent  Rome  feels  the  faun-blood  of  Nature 
Leap  in  his  limbs,  while  an  imponderous  rib 


THE   SISTINE   EVE  67 

Of  marble  sloth  from  his  immortal  heart 
Vast  and  invisibly  is  plucked  away, 
And  from  that  rent  —  profuse  of  ecstasy, 
Exhilarant  of  life  and  innocence, 
Trailing  bright  incense  for  her  naked  glory  — 
Outpours  the  Spring. 


FIRST  INTERLUDE 

THE  SISTINE  SPIRIT 

How  fair  he  sleeps  —  this  lordly  child  of  Time ! 
In  sleep,  the  soul  is  in  its  infancy 
And  Power  a  babe  again.     But  soon  the  dawn 
Will  break,  and  he  will  rise  to  titan-stature. 

Meanwhile,  within  the  crystal  of  his  slumber, 
O'erhanging  visions  pass,  as  o'er  a  lake 
The  hues  of  sunset,  sweeping  across  heaven, 
Lay  down  their  splendors  in  its  placid  heart, 
And  passing,  leave  no  tremor  on  its  face. 


68 


SECOND    CANTO:   THE   TEMPTATION 
OF  EVE 

CHORUS  OF  THE  CORNICE  CHERUBIM 

The  Tree  !  —  Behold  the  curtain-cloud  is  cleft ! 
The  Tree,  in  all  its  pride  and  mystery ! 

And  smiling  on  its  left 

Content  and  Innocence,  Self-love  and  Leth 
argy; 

And  on  its  right, 
Departing  into  night  — 
Anguish,  Sin,  Death,  Love  and  Eternity ! 

A  SYMBOLIC  FIGURE 

Sister  of  an  Orient  eld, 

What  read'st  thou  from  that  parchment,  held 

Close  to  thine  eyes,  as  if  thou  spelled 

Secrets  from  all  else  withheld, 
Or  as,  at  twilight,  thou  should  squint  to  see 
A  form,  that  moves  or  stands  beyond  thy  scrutiny  ? 

THE  PERSIAN  SIBYL 

I  trace  and  read,  in  Time's  obscure  abysm,  — 
Where  cold  Imagination,  like  a  prism, 


70  THE   SISTINE   EVE 

Darts   many-colored   beams   on   the   carved 

walls,  — 
The  subtle  sorceries  of  scepticism. 

I  seek  —  and  vainly  through  the  centuries 
I  sought  —  a  fire,  which  kindled  never  dies, 

Like  that  which  yonder,  'neath  the  darkling 

Tree 
Of  Knowledge,  burns  in  Eve's  uplifted  eyes. 

THE  FIGURE 

Thou,  loosened  from  whose  sea-green  veil 
The  auburn  tresses  lightly  trail, 
While  soft  thy  mantle's  azure  pale 
Floats  round  thee,  like  a  filling  sail, 
Where  rests  thy  dreamy  gaze,  as  though,  unfurl'd 
On  some  Olympic  height,  it  brooded  o'er  the  world  ? 

THE  DELPHIC  SIBYL 

I  dream  (and  in  my  dream,  I  smile) 
Of  a  maid  in  Melos'  isle  — 

How  beautiful  she  was  ! 
She  kept  no  slave,  she  wore  no  crown, 
But  all  the  gods  from  heaven  looked  down 

To  see  her  pass. 

Her  brow  was  calm,  her  limbs  were  free; 
The  might  of  her  simplicity 


THE   SISTINE   EVE  71 

To  men  seemed  more  than  human : 
A  Deity  !   they  cried ;   a  new 
Venus  !  —  But  one,  who  loved  her,  knew 

That  she  was  Woman. 

He  wrought  her  all  of  marble  pure. 
He  cried :   Thy  beauty  shall  endure 

When  Hellas  sleeps  in  clay. 
Behold,  O  World,  thy  Womanhood  !  — 
They  smote  the  statue  where  she  stood, 

And  hewed  the  arms  away. 

They  buried  her  both  dark  and  deep; 
They  bade  their  wives  and  sisters  heap 

Mould  on  her,  with  their  hands :  — 
She  rose  like  light !     The  centuries 
Slipped  like  a  garment  to  her  knees, 

And  still  she  stands  ! 


THE  FIGURE 

Sibyl  hoar,  Enchantress  holy, 
Giantess  of  Melancholy, 
Tell  us  - 

CHORUS  OF  CHERUBIM 
Hush! 


72  THE   SISTINE   EVE 

THE  FIGURE 

What  awful  book 
(As  when  some  rugged  hill 
Cleaves  with  a  titan's  look) 
Opens  beneath  thy  gaze, 
Where  thy  vast,  pagan  face 

Is  darkened  under 
Night-hues  of  unreverberating  thunder? 

CHORUS  OF  CHERUBIM 

Still !  O  still ! 
She  is  not  such 
As  tone  of  mortal  song  can  touch. 

THE  FIGURE 

Speak,  Prophetess ! 
We  fear  —  we  guess  — 
What  our  hearts  wait  in  breathlessness. 

THE  CU&LEAN  SIBYL 
"Tarquin  !  Tarquin  !"  —  Thousand  score 
They  hailed  him  god  and  emperor. 
I  entered  at  his  palace  door: 
I  looked  at  him  — 

CHORUS  OF  CHERUBIM 

No  more  !  No  more  ! 


THE   SISTINE   EVE  73 

THE  CUM^EAN  SIBYL 

I  said :  I  bring  thee  volumes  nine. 
Men  name  thee  lordly  and  divine: 
Thou  shall  be  —  but  the  price  is  mine ! 
He  said :   I  take  no  price  of  thine. 

I  hurled  six  volumes  in  the  flame. 
He  cried :   What  price  now  dost  thou  name* 
O  Prophetess  ?  —  I  said :   The  same  ! 
He  frowned ;   I  went  the  way  I  came. 

He  sent  for  me  at  set  of  sun : 
And  hast  thou  burned  them  aU  but  one  ? 
And  hast  no  other  price  ?  —  Nay,  none. 
He  answered :   Then  thy  will  be  done  ! 

THE  FIGURE 

Speak,  Sibyl,  speak !    What  was  the  price 
Which  asked  so  proud  a  sacrifice? 

JUDITH 

[Aside  to  her  maid,  who  bears  the  head  of  Holo- 
f ernes  on  a  golden  salver] 

Hark  what  she  saith  ! 

THE  CUJVLEAN  SIBYL 

The  same  which  yonder,  of  Eve's  eyes, 
The  Serpent  asks,  in  Paradise. 


74  THE   SISTINE   EVE 

JUDITH 
I  guessed  it :  —  death. 

GOLIATH  [to  David] 

Death! 
******* 

FIRST  CHERUB 

Hark    yonder,    where    from    wall    to    wall,    two 

Prophets 

Converse  like  oaks  in  storm  across  a  grove, 
One  husht  in  the  roar,  one  vocal  in  the  lull. 

SECOND  CHERUB 
Which  one  is  silent  ? 

FIRST  CHERUB 

He  who,  browed  benign, 
Sits  like  the  Prince  of  Death,  soliloquizing 
With  the  commanding  genius  of  his  soul. 

SECOND  CHERUB 

But  the  other  one:   What  beetling  thoughts  are 

his 

Where,  like  a  crag  o'erclung  by  cataracts, 
He   murmurs  deep  in  the  tortuous  folds  of  his 

beard  ? 


THE   SISTINE   EVE  75 

FIRST  CHERUB 
Listen ! 

JEREMIAH 

I  have  likened  the  Daughter  of  Zion  to  a  comely 

and  delicate  woman: 
The  shepherds  with  their  flocks  shall  come  unto 

her  round  about. 
They  shall  pitch  their  tents  against  her ;  they  shall 

feed  every  one  in  his  place. — 
Yea,  Eve,  men  are  thy  shepherds,  and  thou  like 

the  Daughter  of  Zion. 

Prepare  ye  war  against  her !    Arise  !  let  us  go  up 

at  noon. 
Woe  unto  us !  for  the  day  goeth  away,  and  the 

shadows  of  evening 
Are  stretched  out  and  afar.     Arise  !  let  us  go  up 

by  night, 
And  let  us  destroy  her  palaces.     Let  us  smite  the 

city  that  fed  us  !  — 
Yea,  Eve,  men  are  thy  shepherds,  and  thou  like 

the  Daughter  of  Zion. 

ISAIAH 

Yet  shall  they  not  destroy  her !     But  their  land 

shall  be  named  Ignorance. 
It  shall  be  no  more  inhabited,  but  wild  beasts  of 

the  desert  shall  lie  there. 


76  THE   SISTINE   EVE 

Yea,  satyrs  shall  dance  on  their  hearths,  and 
dragons  crouch  in  their  palaces. 

For  the  city  is  stablished,  O  Eve,  where  thy 
dreaming  shall  have  its  fruition. 

Where  shall  the  Ignorant  dwell  ?     Yea,  where  is 

the  land  of  their  Eden  ? 
The  grass  thereof  shall  wither;  their  heavens  be 

closed  as  a  scroll; 
And  all  their  host  shall  fall  down,  as  the  leaf  fall- 

eth  off  from  the  vine. 
But   the    city  is  stablished   in  Man,  where   thy 

dreaming,  O  Eve,  hath  fruition. 

CHORUS  OF  CHERUBIM 

The  Tree  !    The  smiling,  bitter  Tree  ! 
The  Tree,  in  all  its  pride  and  mystery ! 

ADAM  [beneath  the  Tree] 

Where  dost  thou  look,  beloved,  O  my  Bride  ? 

Where  dost  thou  gaze  beyond  and  far  away  ? 
Dost  thou  not  feel  thy  lover  at  thy  side, 

And  the  soft  winds  of  this  cerulean  day  ? 
Why  look'st  thou  so,  beloved,  O  my  Bride  ? 

THE  SNAKE 

Lift  up  thine  eyes  to  mine,  daughter  of  God  ! 
Like  birds  into  heaven  let  them  enter  in :  — 


THE   SISTINE   EVE  77 

Behold  an  angel  battling  with  a  cloud; 

The  angel  is  Man ;  the  splendid  cloud  is  Sin ; 
The  battle  is  Man's  Soul,  daughter  of  God. 

ADAM 

Let  us  go  forth  into  our  garden,  love: 

The  birds  are  singing  and  the  beasts  awaken. 

Dew-laden  dreams  fall  round  us  from  above, 

Like  almond-bloom,  when  breezy  boughs  are 
shaken. 

Let  us  go  forth  into  our  garden,  love ! 

THE  SNAKE 

Eat  of  the  fruit  of  Knowledge,  Child  of  Eden ! 
Of  bitter  Knowledge,  which  hath  roots    in 

death. 

Dare  with   thy  dreams  —  yea,  that  which  is  for 
bidden  ! 

For  life  is  but  a  dream  which  conquereth 
Its  coil  of  slumber.     Live,  then,  Child  of  Eden ! 

ADAM 

Love,  there  shall  be  no  thought  but  Thee  and  Me 
Forevermore.     When  our  two  spirits  mate, 

Time  and  the  world  shall  do  us  ministry 
And  all  the  stars  contribute  to  our  state. 

Love,  there  shall  be  no  joy  but  Thee  and  Me. 


78  THE    SISTINE   EVE 

THE  SNAKE 

Behold  the  stars  —  and  Thee  and  Me  forgotten  ! 
Time  and  the  world  and   other  lovers,  trem 

bling 
At  all  the  beauty  still  to  be  begotten; 

Yea,  hark  to  thine  and  Adam's  sons  assem 

bling 
To  hymn  thy  deed,  when  Eden  lies  forgotten. 


CHORUS  OF  MALE  PRESENCES 

We  thirst  for  life,  and  the  more  we  thirst 
The  swifter  the  rivers  of  love  outpour 

To  quench  us  ; 

Like  the  living,  leaping  waters  that  burst 
From  the  Prophet's  stroke  on  the  desert's  shore, 
They  uprise  and  drench  us, 
Yet  we  thirst  the  more 
And  we  joy  to  thirst, 
For  we  count  the  pain  a  joy  to  repay  us, 
When  the  power  of  love,  which  pants  to  allay  us, 
Quickens  again 
And  again,  as  at  first, 
The  infinite  rapture  the  weak  call  pain. 

And  we  know  —  for  we  have  sharpened  the  dull  edge 
Of  sense  on  the  sword  of  the  Tree  of  Knowledge, 


THE   SISTINE   EVE  79 

And  we  feel  —  as  Spring  feels  the   sky  in  the 

sod  — 

That  we  are  the  sons  of  a  son  of  God. 
And  we  kindle  from  that  a  divine  volition  — 
The  fire  of  more  than  a  mortal  ambition, 
The  love  of  a  conflict  deep  and  grand 
Which  only  Manhood  can  understand,  — 
And  we  bless  the  Apple,  that  erst  was  accurst, 
And  our  Mother  Eve,  who  bestowed  the  thirst, 
Which  vaults,  like  flame,  through  spirit  and  brain, 
And  courses  like  vigor  through  every  vein, 
In  seeking  the  joys  that  the  weak  call  pain. 

CHORUS  OF  BOTTICELLI'S  WOMEN 

We  thirst  for  love,  and  the  more  we  thirst 
The  deeper  our  spirits  and  limbs  are  immerst 

In  the  beauty,  that  is  love's  radiance: 
Out  at  our  eyes,  o'er  the  tremulous  brim 
Of  our  hearts,  it  beams,  as  at  heaven's  rim 

The  moon  brightens  over  a  lake  in  a  trance; 
Till  a  peace,  more  lovely  than  morning  light, 
Makes  us  grow  like  lilies,  tall  and  bright, 

From  the  banks  of  Sin,  which  is  Ignorance. 

And  we  take  an  innocent,  shy  delight 

In  the  flow  of  our  maiden  forms,  and  the  sight 

Of  our  faces,  half  glimpsed,  half  recondite, 


80  THE   SISTINE   EVE 

And  the  luminous  coils  of  our  looping  dresses, 

Which  emulate  the  beauty  of  tresses, 

And    the   flower-like   grace   of   our   hands;    but 

these 
Are  the  symbols  of  inner  serenities. 

For  we  know  [from  that  piercing  intuition 
Which  takes  from  Eve  its  superb  ignition] 
And  we  feel  —  by  the  light  in  each  other's  eyes  — 
That  we  are  the  daughters  of  Paradise. 
And  this  sense  brings  with  it  a  certitude 
Of  the  immortal  aim  of  this  mortal  feud, 
And  makes  us  simply  reconciled 
With  weakness  of  woman  and  birth  of  child, 
And  makes  our  souls,  in  largess,  be 
Self-renderers  to  futurity, 
With  a  faith,  miscalled  fatuity 
By  those  who  love  beauty  less  than  we, 
And  a  passive  joy  in  the  present's  good, 
And  a  self-forgetting,  understood 
By  the  heart  alone  of  womanhood. 
And  therefore  we  bless  the  divinely  human 
Heart  of  Eve,  that  created  us  Woman, 
And  gave  us  that  insight,  which  can  prove 
Its  faith,  that  ours  —  while  the  planets  move  — 
Are  the  worship  and   strength   of  the  men  we 
love. 


THE   SISTINE   EVE  81 

CHORUS  OF  SHAPES  IN  "THE  LAST  JUDGMENT" 

We  are  the  Phantoms,  which  the  exceeding  mad 
ness 
Of  mortal  Ignorance  creates  in  sadness 

Out  of  the  clouds  of  conflict  and  of  pain. 
Horror  and  Hopelessness,  amid  the  gnarring 
And  knotted  tumult  of  our  rabid  warring, 

Spawn  us,  and  their  own  Dark  devours  us 
again. 

Hateful  to  others,  to  ourselves  abhorrent, 
We  fume  and  wrestle,  like  a  falling  torrent 

That,  fearing,  hastens  its  own  overthrow; 
Or  bleakly  blown  upon  by  winds  eternal, 
Like  shadowy  spirits  strewn  on  shores  infernal, 

Downcast,  we  file  in  diuturnity  of  woe. 

Far  from  the  lamps  of  Dawn  and  pure  Orion, 
We  endure  the  anarch  tortures  of  Ixion  — 

Immortal  anguish :   misery  !   O  pain  ! 
Love,  send  thy  light  amid  our  dim  abortions, 
To  show  that  we  are  evanescent  portions 

Of  the  Mind's  mortal  battling  for  the  eternal 
gain. 


82  THE   SISTINE   EVE 

JONAS 

Awful  and  dazzling  Loveliness  ! 
Immortal  Render  of  our  mystery ! 
O  World  !     O  orbed  Time  ! 

0  Heaven !    And  does  my  spirit  climb 
Beyond  them  all,  beyond  them  all  —  to  thee, 
Lady  ineffable  of  Love  ?  —  This,  this 

It  is  to  love,  to  dare  and  to  achieve ! 

Behold,  O  Eve, 

The  consummation  of  thy  bitter  Tree. 
Look,   mighty   Mother!    Even   thou   didst   con 
ceive 

This  son  !  —  Thine  insurrection  leaps  in  me, 
An  effervescing  fire,  a  piercing  foison 
Of  keen  effulgence !    Vision  in  mine  eyes 
Like  clouded  wine  it  pours,  and  in  my  limbs 

Impenetrating  joy,  subtler  than  poison, 
And  in  mine  ears  —  incomparable  hymns  ! 

Yea,  like  a  Charioteer,  on  whirling  Time, 

1  sit  sublime, 

And  guide,  with  my  majestical  left  hand, 
The  invisible  reins  of  nameless  black  Despairs 
And  haughty  Miseries  —  a  chafing  band 
That  plunge  and  tremble,   like  enraged  Night 
mares, 

In  the  dusk  of  the  Last  Judgment;    these,  like 
steeds, 


THE   SISTINE   EVE  83 

Propel  the  triumph  of  my  viewless  car, 
And  while  the  purple  incense  streams  from  under 
The  trampling  fleetness  of  their  muffled  thunder, 
And  while  their  flanks   froth  terrors,   in  bright 
beads, 

To  dare  the  goal 

Of  my  imperious  soul,  — 
Still  guiding  them,  as  with  a  god's  control, 
Over  my  splendid  shoulder  turning 

Mine  eyes,  in  giant  yearning, 
Upward,  my  Mother,  upward  still  to  thee 
I  gaze  for  power  and  love  and  immortality. 


THE  SNAKE  [to  Eve] 

Now  canst  thou  doubt  the  beauty  of  thy  dream 

ing? 

Now  canst  thou  doubt  the  duty  of  thy  deed  ? 
Eat  of  the  fruit,  O  Eve  !    Thou  art  redeeming 

The  race  of  Adam  to  their  latest  seed, 
For  Time  shall  prove  the  beauty  of  thy  dream 
ing. 

EVE  [taking  the  Apple  from  the  Snake] 

O  ye  Wise,  love  Beauty  !    All 
Ye  Strong,  revere  Her  ! 


SECOND    INTERLUDE 

THE  SISTINE  SPIRIT 

Ha !   dost  thou   shake  thy    slumber    off,  young 

titan  ? 

(Unconscious  child  no  more,  for  now  the  dawn 
Proclaims  the  awaking  world.)     Ah !   dost  thou 

seize 

The  shadow  of  my  mantle,  and  in  mine  eyes 
Gaze  with  an  ecstasy  of  pain  and  power  ? 
Say,  dost  thou  feel  the  immitigable  blade, 
Which  sings  in  the  light  above  the  Tree  of  Knowl 
edge, 

Upscorch  the  loveless  impotence  within  thee, 
Ignite  thy  mind,  and  scorify  thy  heart  ? 
What !  dost  thou  reach  thy  hand  thyself  to  swing 

it? 

Arise  !     Go  forth  !  Youth  of  the  centuries, 
And   wield   thy   sword    in   prayer   to   thy   great 
Mother ! 


84 


THIRD   CANTO:    THE   BIRTH   OF  MAN 

CHORUS  OF  PRESENCES 

Eden  is  fallen ! 
Man  is  arisen ! 

Like  a  knighted  warrior,  behold  him  arise. 
Like  a  waker  from  slumber, 
Like  a  captive  from  prison, 
He  bursts  from  the  bondage  of  Paradise ! 
For  the  Almighty's  stroke 
Has  severed  the  yoke 
Of  the  beast's  contentment  and  earthward  eyes. 

SONG  OF  THE  EXPELLING  ANGEL 

Mine  is  the  stroke  Promethean  ! 

The  infinite  love  that  burns  like  ire, 

The  impregnating  might,  the  conceiving  fire, 

And  the  pang  that  delivers  the  Birth  of  Man. 

I  am  the  life,  whose  garment  is  Death, 

And  Truth  like  a  lining  within  is  laid, 

And  him  who  seeks  me  I  singe  with  my 

blade, 

But  he  weareth  the  garment  and  triumpheth. 
85 


86  THE   SISTINE   EVE 

Adam,  depart !    My  sword's  flame,  like  a  torch's, 
Reveals      thy      kingdom      consumed      and 

wrecked, 

But  the  pain  that  revolts  in  thine  intellect 
Is    the    love    that    heals    in    the    lightning    that 
scorches. 

CHORUS  OF  PRESENCES 

Eden  is  fallen ! 

Man  is  arisen ! 

He  is  burst  from  the  prison 
Of  Paradise ! 

ADAM 

Eve,  crouch  more  close  to  me.     I  will  protect  thee. 
The  hailing  fire  my  sense  like  anguish  sears. 
The  goal  is  far  —  but  O  !  how  glorious, 
For  through  the  night  thine  eyes  are  still  the  stars. 


PART  TWO 

POEMS  LYRICAL  AND   DESCRIPTIVE 


GROUP  I 


Two    song-birds    build    their    nests    within    my 
brain, 

And  hatch  strange  broods,  each  to  his  own  re 
frain  ; 
Ever  one  sings :   "  To-morrow, 

Sweet  Joy !"    The  other:  "Yesterday,  sweet  sor 
row!" 


91 


FRAIL  Sleep,  that  blowest  by  fresh  banks 

Of  quiet,  crystal  pools,  beside  whose  brink 
The  varicolored  dreams,  like  cattle,  come  to 
drink, 

Cool  Sleep,  thy  reeds,  in  solemn  ranks, 

That  murmur  peace   to   me   by  midnight's 

streams, 

At  dawn  I  pluck,  and  dayward  pipe  my  flock 
of  dreams. 


92 


THE  ARC  LIGHT 

I  WATCHED  an  arc  light  under  wind-stirr'd  trees 

Sleep    on    the    pale  green    grass,  in    tender 
swoon, 

And  held  my  breath  thinking  the  pensive 

moon 

Was  telling  there  her  lucent  rosaries. 
Light  of  the  Arts !   no  more  by  lonely  seas 

Wandering  in  naked  glory  art  thou  met; 

From  out  our  heaven  Homer's  moon  has  set, 
That  lit  the  love-bowers  of  the  Dryades. 

Yet   'neath   the   conscious   vestments   Time  has 
wrought, 

The  simple  Graces  love  and  act  the  same; 
And  through  the  subtle  wires  of  labored  thought 

The  world  is  lit  by  heaven's  divinest  flame, 
Till,  in  the  sordid  midnight  of  the  poor, 
The  lamp  of  Zeus  illumes  a  workman's  door. 


93 


SHE  stood  before  a  florist's  window-pane. 

Roses  peered  forth  and  they  were  envious 
pale, 

And  lilies,  white  as  cloistered  virgin's  veil, 
Vied  with  the  deep  carnations  but  in  vain. 
If  at  her  beauty's  heart  a  lethal  stain 

Were  hid,  to  beauty's  face  it  told  no  tale. 

"Cut   flowers    [so   she    read    the    sign]   for 

sale;" 
Half  to  herself  she  murmured  it  again. 

One  stopped  within  the  sharp,  electric  light, 
And  threw  his  shadow  on  her  and  his  eyes, 
Nor  read  those  sad  concealed  analogies 

Of  which  her  gorgeous,  answering  look 
was  full. 

"  Cut  flowers,"  and  to-morrow  they  shall  blight, 
But  till  to-morrow,  God  !  how  beautiful. 


94 


I  DREAMED  a  thousand  ages,  armed  with  flint 
And  bone  and  bronze,  were  toiling  in  a  mint, 

And  sculptured  rude  to  see 
On  each  rough  coin  they  struck  was  "  Poesie." 

And  now,  in  that  same  hall,  a  mighty  wheel, 
Revolved  incessant  by  a  mob  in  steel, 

Showers  the  round  gold  thence 
Stamped    with    the    goddess's    head    "Conven 
ience." 


95 


LEISURE,  kind  Leisure,  I  require ! 

Leisure,  whose  snood 

Of  quiethood 
Conceals  shy  dreams  of  sage  desire: 

For  Leisure,  only  Leisure, 
Ripens  young  thought  and  brings  work  pleasure. 

Dull  toil  is  but  a  drudge  at  best; 

Sloth  has  no  profit, 

Sleep  —  still  less  of  it ; 
But  idle  brains  are  busiest 

While  Leisure,  shyest  Leisure, 
Ripens  young  thought  and  brings  work  pleasure. 


96 


HER  eyes  are  casements  clear  as  dew 
For  her  kindness  to  look  through; 
There,  behind  their  crystal,  stray 
Fairy  fancies  dressed  in  gray; 
Through  the  trellis'd  lashes,  till 
Slumber  draws  the  silken  blind, 
Her  quick  spirit  peeps  behind 
The  pane,  or  signals  from  the  sill. 


97 


IN   VENICE 

THE  Lady  of  the  Sunset, 

The  Bride  of  the  New  Moon, 
She  lifts  her  liquid  garments 

About  her  silvery  shoon, 
And  as  she  sways  their  draperies 

The  dim  stars  interwoven 
In  their  dark  fabric  swing  and  ripple 

Like  winds  by  music  cloven. 

The  Princess  of  the  Olden  Isles, 

The  Enamored  of  the  Sea, 
She  has  glided  from  her  throne  of  stars 

And  courtesied,  Love,  to  thee: 
Along  her  smooth  and  turquoise  halls 

She  glides,  and  kneels  with  me 
Before  thy  shrine,  with  clasped  hands, 

And  bows  and  prays  to  thee ! 


98 


A   MATINADE 

RISE,  sweet  signora  of  the  sigh ! 

The  gondola  is  gliding  by. 

The  queenly  Adriatic  Sea 

Shall  hold  her  mirror,  dear,  for  thee, 

Apollo  be  thy  slave,  to  twine 

A  fillet  for  those  locks  of  thine, 

And  lure  the  moonlight  from  thine  eyes 

To  cool  the  day-star  of  his  skies. 

So  lady  dear,  be  fleet ! 

And  from  your  dreamy  sighs, 
Signora  mine,  signora  sweet, 
Arise ! 


TO   A   GONDOLA 

SWAN  of  the  silver  beak  and  sable  breast, 
Stemming  the  night, 

Art  them  a  bird  of  song,  or  bark  of  quest, 
Or  heaven-wandered  sprite, 
That  in  the  still  moonlight 

Makest  in  palace  courts  thy  liquid  nest? 

If  bird  thou  be,  what  swaying  skies  are  these, 
Between  two  heavens, 

That  lap  thee  in  their  starry  lucencies, 

Whilst  thou  toward  unseen  havens, 
With  plumage  like  the  raven's 

Glidest  with  pinions  closed  against  the  breeze  ? 

If  bark  thou  be,  what  fairy  argosies 

Leadest  thou  on  ? 
What  amber  port  of  all  the  sunset's  seas 

Lures  thee  with  music  yon  ? 

What  fetes  of  Oberon, 

Tinkling  husht  joys,  twinkling  tranquillities  ? 
100 


TO   A   GONDOLA  101 

A  sprite  thou  art  —  a  spirit  without  peer ! 
A  lover's  thought 

Thou  art,  and  Fancy  is  thy  gondolier, 
Whose  gliding  vision,  fraught 
With  song  and  love,  gleams  but 

An  instant  in  life's  dark,  only  to  disappear. 


IN   THE   STILL   CAMPAGNA.' 

IN  the  still  campagna, 
When  no  birds  were  singing, 
'Mid  the  undulating 
Little  hills  and  hollows 
Pied  with  starred  mosaic, 
There  I  stopped  and  pondered. 


Right  against  the  azure 
Of  the  Alban  mountains, 
Rose  an  overwhelming 
Gaunt  and  eyeless  ruin: 
Eyeless,  but  the  sockets 
Stared  on  me  in  sadness. 

Loneliness  then  clutched  me 
Like  a  chill  at  noonday; 
Terrors  of  old  Caesars 
Taught  me  a  new  heartache 
Where  those  walls  still  on  me 
Stared  with  a  stark  blindness. 

"  How  !  old  earthy  phantom, 
Hast  thou,  then,  no  solace 
102 


IN   THE   STILL   CAMPAGNA."         103 


When  the  burning  sunbeam 
Chars  thy  skull  like  Cyclops'  ? 
None?     No  inner  vision, 
Thoughts  that  hymn  like  Homer's  ?  " 

Hardly  had  I  ceased  when 
Sudden  from  the  knollside, 
Or  perhaps  from  heaven, 
Through  that  hollow,  lidless 
Ruin  flying,  rose  a 
Flock  of  songbirds,  singing. 


Love,  you  are  my  nature ! 
When  by  lonely  breedings 
Long  on  mortal  anguish 
I  stand  blinded,  swift  and 
Sweet  from  lyric  fountains, 
Dart  then  through  my  sadness 
Songbirds  of  your  soul ! 


EARLY   MAY   IN   NEW  ENGLAND 

STRAWBERRY-FLOWER  and  violet 
Are  come,  but  the  wind  blows  coldly  yet; 
And  robin's-egg  skies  brood  sunny  chill 
Where  hyacinth  summer  sleeps  under  the  hill 
And  the  frog  is  still. 

Applebloom  floats  on  the  warm  blue  river, 
But  white  shad-blossoms  ripple  and  shiver, 
And  purple-grackle  pipes  till  his  blithe  heart 

grieves, 

For  his  gladdest  songs,  through  the  little  elm- 
leaves, 
Are  but  make-believes. 


104 


EARLY  APRIL  IN  ENGLAND 

ACROSS  the  moist  beam  of  the  cloud-rimmed  sun, 

The  larks  run  up  in  ecstasies  of  Spring, 

And  little  feathered  flutes  of  melody, 

The  yellow-ammers,  pipe  along  the  hedges. 

The  sheep,  half  basking  in  the  golden  blaze, 
Half  shivering  in  the  gray,  engulfing  shadows, 
Browse  on  the  faint-green  hills ;  the  chilly  wind 
Ruffles  the  white  geese  on  the  rippled  pond. 


105 


SONG 

SPRING  is  Shakspere's  garden  !  — 
In  May,  to  the  lover's  mind, 
Every  rose  is  a  Rosalind 

And  every  wood  an  Arden. 

Hark!  "Phoebe!  Phoebe !  Phoebe!" 
Sylvius  !   Can  it  he  be  ? 


106 


HOLIDAY 

WHAT  is  so  free 

As  a  child  in  its  glee, 

Or  a  bird  on  the  tree ! 

A  jumping  boy 

Is  a  wave  of  joy; 

Little  girls, 

That  gayly  pass 

With  flying  curls 

Across  the  grass, 

The  soul  unclog: 

And  oh  a  sight 

Of  rare  delight 

Is  a  running  shepherd  dog ! 


107 


THE   KATYDID 

THOU  husky  raven  of  the  insect  race, 

Who  hintest  —  hid  by  darkness  from  espial 

Of  some  poor  maid's  disgrace, 

Cease  this  asseveration  and  denial ! 

Whatever  the  black  blame,  will  it  abate  it 

Thus  to  incessant  rasp  and  iterate  it? 

If  Katy  did  the  dark  deed,  let  her  state  it. 


108 


THE   CRICKET 

HARK  to  the  fairy  linnet  — 
How  reticent  he  sings  ! 
Sings,  stops;  then,  in  a  minute, 
He'll  re-begin  it, 

Then  stop  again. 

The  sunset  is  his  dawn : 

When  day  is  over, 

He  pipes  a  delicate  strain 
Beneath  the  tiger-lilies,  by  the  lawn, 

Or,  from  the  top  boughs  of  the  tallest  clover, 
Outpours  his  Lilliputian  carollings. 


109 


AT  night,  I  prayed  for  sleep ;   instead 
The  Muse  came,  rummaging  my  head 
For  rhymes.     Again  I  craved  the  dews 
Of  sleep ;   they  fell  —  upon  the  Muse. 


110 


WITH   A   ROSE 

TO    S.    A.    D. 
A  ROSE 

From  lovely  Rhodope's  remotest  time  — 

The  poets  chose 
To  instil  a  lovelier  meaning  in  their  rhyme. 

A  friend 
Is  subtler  than  a  poet.     Friendship  knows 

A  way  to  lend 
A  finer  fragrance  even  to  the  rose. 


Ill 


STANZAS 

TO  THE  BUKNISHED  GRAIN  OF  AN  OLD-FASHIONED 
MAHOGANY  TABLE 

AURORAL  tempest  on  an  auburn  sea, 

Scourged  by  the  spectres  of  unmoving  wind, 
Still  storm,  dumb  gale,  immured  immensity, 

Dark  thunderer  upon  the  shores  of  mind, 

Spirit  of  oceans  !  —  here  thou  art  confined 
In  beauty  and  in  silence.     Rive  thy  locks 

Tumultuous,  till  thy  bronze  waves  foam  in 


Writhe  on  till  thou  art  hoary, 
The  hush-air'd  chamber  shall  not  feel  thy  shocks, 
Nor  thy  smooth  polished  shore  thereby  be  under 
mined. 

Wild  harrier  of  the  mad  atmospheres, 

Whose  looks  are  lightnings,  who  hath  cap 

tured  thee 

And  poured  in  wood  this  sunny  wrath  of  tears  ? 
Who  else  but  mirror-cinctured  Nature,  she 
That  lurks  by  rivers  and  the  placid  sea 
112 


STANZAS  113 

To  prison-in  the  silent-roaring  thunders 

With  pomp  pictorial.     In  such  still  state 

Art  thou  incarcerate, 

And  Time,  whose  sitting  worketh  mellow  won 
ders, 
Thy  jailer  sits,  in  cell  of  dark  mahogany. 

The  terrors  of  the  guessed  invisible 

Are  worse  than  seen  calamities ;   the  eye 
Beholds  not  here  the  famine- screeching  gull, 

The  ear  knows  not  the  night-wreck'd  sea 
man's  cry, 

Yet  may  the  fancy  hear  his  monody 
Sung  by  the  mermaids  of  those  amber  deeps, 

Beneath    whose    burnished    and    congealed 
waves 

A  lurid  dragon  raves, 

Whose  dropping  eye  with  ruddy  tinctures  steeps 
That  marvel-teeming  world  in  strange  mortality. 

Tempestuous  sea,  dash  on !    Roar  on,  dim  tides, 
That   come,  or   go,  or  stay,  —  we   are    not 
stirred ; 

The  dark-descending  simoon  o'er  thee  glides, 
But  to  the  wooden'd  sense  it  moans  are  surd. 

Even  while  we  gaze,  our  inward  eyes  —  grown 

blurr'd,— 

i 


114  STANZAS 

Behold  thee  for  illusion,  that  reproves 

Our  reason's  folly,  till  we  ask:  why  should 

We  sympathize  with  wood  ? 
Yea,  thou  art  like  a  passionate  heart  that  loves : 
Wildly  it  beats  upon  the  world,  but  is  not  heard. 


SUNSET 

BEHOLD  where  Night  clutches  the  cup  of  heaven 
And  quaffs  the  beauty  of  the  world  away ! 
Lo,  his  first  draught  is  all  of  dazzling  day; 

The  next  he  fills  with  the  red  wine  of  even 

And  drinks ;  then  of  the  twilight's  amber,  seven 
Deep  liquid  hues,  seven  times,  superb  in  ray, 
He  fills — and  drinks;  the  last,  a  mead  pale- 
gray 

Leaves   the  black   beaker  gemmed   with   starry 
levin. 

Even  so  does  Time  quaff  our  mortality ! 

First,  of  the  effervescing  blood  and  blush 
Of  virgin  years,  then  of  maturity 

The  deeper  glow,  then  of  the  pallid  hush 
Where  only  the  eyes  still  glitter,  till  even  they  — 
After  a  pause  —  melt  in  immenser  day. 


115 


FOR   F.    J.    L. 

THE  flower  shall  fade,  not  the  spirit 
Which  gave  to  it  being; 

That  has  finer  forms  to  inherit 
Beyond  our  mere  seeing. 

Oh,  why  does  the  lily  seem  fair? 

For  seeing  ?   for  smelling  ? 
Or  is  it  that  Ariel  there 

Has  found  him  a  dwelling? 

Stale  flowers  for  me  shall  not  sere, 
If  you  do  but  give  them ; 

Slight  thoughts  for  me  shall  be  dear, 
If  you  but  conceive  them. 


116 


TO   M.    AND   M.    L. 

I  CANNOT  think  good-by; 

How  can  I  say  it? 
My  heart's  debt  lies  too  nigh 

For  words  to  pay  it. 

Bright  cloud,  that  flingest  wide 
The  heaven's  wonder, 

Dark  cloud,  and  dim  hillside, 
And  far-voiced  thunder, 

Soft  breeze,  that  ringest  clear 
The  sweet  day's  knell, 

Sad  bird,  that  singest  near,  — 
Speak  my  farewell ! 


117 


BALLAD 


YOUNG  rider  and  steed  they  dash  on  through  the 

dusk, 
And  the  fog  gathers  gray  as  the  mould  on  the 

husk, 

And  the  froth  on  the  flank  is  like  foam  on  the  flood 
Where  the  brown  stream  pours  panting  through 
dark  underwood. 

"But  what  of  the  night,  love,  and  what  of  the 

miles, 
When  the  morning  shall  break  in  my  true  love's 

own  smiles? 
Oh,  I'd  ride  the  white  charger  that  neighs  from  the 

sea 
To  the  edge  of  the  world,  if  she  waited  for  me !" 

Dim  head  in  the  doorway  it  hears  him  dash  by, 
And  the  cold   smile  curls  keen,  and  the  laugh 
lights  the  eye : 

118 


BALLAD  119 

"Ye'll  hae  off  wi'  your  league-boots  and  love  by 

the  sea 
When  your  bonny  hair's  white  and  ye're  wiser 

like  me." 


n 


The  flare's  in  the  chimney,  the  song's  on  the 

crane, 
And  the  maiden   sits  watching   the  fog  on   the 

pane, 

And  the  hot  glowing  hearthlight  is  cosey  and  dry, 
But  the  warm  light  that's  tender's  the  light  in  her 

eye. 

"Nay,  granny,  I'll  just  take  a  step  from  the  sill, 
For  the  twilight  is  cold,  and  the  mist  hides  the 

hill, 
And  fain  would  I  warm  the  whole  world  with  my 

heart 
To  comfort  thee  —  O  my  dear  love  —  where  thou 

art!" 

"  Ye've  let  the  winds  in,  lass ;  the  candle  is  out ! 
Now  God  send  ye  wisdom,  whate'er  ye're  about ! 
The  parritch  is  cold,  lass,  that  erst  was  sae  hot: 
When  ye're  older  ye'll  be  a  deal  wiser,  I  wot ! " 


120  BALLAD 

III 

There's  a  leap  in  the  mist;  there's  a  voice  in  the 

night ; 

There's  a  step  that  is  heavy  with  one  that  is  light : 
"Ah,  love,  dear,  is  wisdom,  and  wisdom  is  this: 
The  seals  of  your  sages — they  melt  with  a  kiss  !" 


EVEN  as  an  infant  fingers  the  crisp  sheet 
And  crumples  it,  the  more  his  milk  is  sweet, 
So  we,  with  restive  hands,  in  happy  sleep 
Enact  vague  deeds  on  Nature's  cover-slip. 


121 


A    CHILD 

BRIEF  Revelation  of  enduring  Truth, 

Frail  snowflake  in  the  silent  storm  of  God, 

Scarce  lighting  on  the  swallow-wing  of  youth 
Ere  wafting  down  to  dew  the  pregnant  sod, 

Infant !   or  Angel  else  —  thine  innocence 

Is  as  a  crystal,  wherethrough  men  may  see 

The  seedling's  might,  the  star's  magnificence, 
And  of  our  common  day  the  mystery. 

More,  it  enkindles  might;  and  like  the  pure 
Polished  convex  of  a  bright  burning-glass, 

Binds  the  wild  hues  and  lightnings,  which  perdure 
In  love  as  heaven,  and  in  concentric  mass 

Ignites  by  them  the  unfeeling  dross  of  nature 
To  conflagrations  heavenly  in  stature. 


122 


BABY   PANTOMIME 

SERENE,  he  sits  on  other  shores 

Than  ours:  with  wide,  unconscious  lands 
He  holds  strange  speech,  or,  silent,  pores 

On  denizens  of  viewless  strands ; 
On  tablets  of  the  air  weird  scores 

He  writes,  and  makes,  with  eager  hands, 
As  strange  erasements ;  then,  two-fisted,  stores 

An  elfin  hour-glass  with  heavenly  sands. 


123 


THE   FIRST  TOOTH 

DEAR  babe,  that  this  should  be !     Whence  should 

this  come  ?  — 

This  horny  'scutcheon  of  an  eld  orang, 
Where  through  the  tender  coral  of  thy  gum 

The   wee,  sly  beast  has  peeped   his   prying 
fang: 

Colossal  meditation  !     Can  this  be 

The  cropping  of  that   seed   which  Cadmus 

sowed  ? 
Or  that  gaunt  emblem  of  mortality 

Under  the  sickle,  on  our  earth-abode  ? 

Forbid  it,  heaven !     'Tis  but  the  nursling  thorn 
That  nestles  near  the  bloom  of  every  rose, 

The  curling  holly-leaf's  keen-sharded  horn, 

The  stubborn  shield  of  beauty's  frail  repose, 

The  official  mace  of  angels :  even  as  the  Lord 
Guarded  the  grace  of  Eden  with  a  sword ! 


124 


THE   DESERTED   STEEDS 

MIDWAY  the  silent  parlor  plain 

The  iron  horses  stand,  nor  turn, 

But  like  the  yoke  that  Putnam  left, 

Await,  mid-field,  their  lord's  return. 

There  they  have  stood  since  yestereve  — 

Nor  champed,  nor  broke  their  traces  —  till 

The  moon  looked  in  the  western  blind, 
Till  morn  peeped  o'er  the  eastern  sill. 

Then  strides  their  lord  to  field  again 

To  crack  his  whip  and  drive  his  teams, 

Back  from  the  far  campaigns  of  sleep, 
The  baby  Bunker  Hill  of  dreams. 


125 


THE   CHILD   AND   SLEEP 

THIS  baby  brow,  like  a  smooth  handkerchief, 
Has  in  the  night  been  ironed  white  and  even, 

And  all  these  little  limbs,  beyond  belief, 

Are   like   sweet  garments,   fresh   prepared    in 
heaven 

To  clothe  the  littlest  angel  loved  by  Mary. 

Who  was  it  smoothed  these  rose-habiliments 
Of  childhood  ?  —  Sleep,  a  gentle  nurse,  and  fairy, 

Who  folds  the  crumplings  of  our  discontents, 

And  lines  Day's  chest  with  viewless  lavender 
To  sweeten  all  the  vestments  of  our  care. 

All  Nature's  tired  children  turn  to  her 
For  renovation ;  for  she  can  repair 

The  outworn  body,  from  her  secret  scrip, 

And  minds  outworn  seek  her  physicianship. 


126 


SUMMER  SONG 

THE  cricket  is  chirring, 

The  tree-toad  is  purring, 
The  busy  frog  pipes, 

The  beetle  is  whirring, 

And  curled  in  his  nest, 
'Mid  the  night  dew  of  rest, 

My  wee  one  is  stirring. 

Then  quick,  Fairy  Hummer, 

Lull  my  newcomer 
Rosy  and  deep 
In  sleep,  soft  sleep, 

9 Mid  the  sweets  of  the  summer. 

The  stars  at  bo-peeping 
Like  white  lambs  are  leaping 

On  the  hills  of  the  dark 
In  the  Good  Shepherd's  keeping: 

Their  wool  is  like  silk, 

And  they  pour  their  bright  milk 
For  my  little  one's  sleeping. 
127 


128  SUMMER   SONG 

Then  hush,  Fairy  Hummer! 

Kiss  my  newcomer, 

And  cradle  him  deep 
In  sleep,  soft  sleep, 

9 Mid  the  sweets  of  the  summer. 


FIRE  WORSHIP 

A  POPPY,  all  on  fire  with  beauty's  beams, 

Outburned  the  glamour  of  the  liquid  bar 
Of  sunlight  where  it  swam,  diffusing  far 

The  brilliance  of  its  spiritual  streams: 

A  chalice,  spilled  on  some  blood-stained  trireme's 
Prow,  in  libation  to  the  sanguine  star, 
The  ritual  cup  of  dread  Dyauspitar, 

Brimmed  with  the  wine  of  its  own  opiate  dreams. 

Before  that  shrine,  in  mute  idolatry,  — 

A  little  Gangean  god,  an  orient 

Cupid,    rose-flushed    with     infant    wonder 
ment — 

The  baby  gazed,  and  reached  in  rhapsody 
His  small,  translucent  hands,  while  silently 

From  flower  to  face  a  rubiate  nimbus  went. 


129 


PLASTIC  Fancies,  form  a  mould: 

Fill  it,  Heart,  with  burning  gold : 
Break  it,  Love,  when  life  is  cold. 

When  the  shard  is  struck  away, 

There  shall  stand  —  where  once  was  clay 
Beauty,  till  the  Judgment-day ! 


130 


THE   UNSAID 

THE  forms  sublime,  the  moods  elate, 
That  rise  within  the  poet's  reach, 

May  never  transubstantiate 

Their  glowing  ardors  into  speech. 

Yet  sweet  —  although  we  fail  in  words  — 
To  feel  the  changed,  creative  light 

That  gleams  on  nature's  fields  and  herds, 
Cast  by  a  sun  of  inner  sight, 

While  burst  upon  the  exultant  brain 
Visions  of  grandeur  and  of  grace. 

He  gazes  more  serene  on  men 

Who  looks  the  Muses  in  the  face* 


131 


I  WATCHED  a  drama,  sitting  in  the  wings, 
And  heard  the  plaudits  of  eternal  things: 

But  when  the  Prompter  bawled 
My  name,  I  failed  my  cue  —  nor  was  recalled. 


132 


ALL  joys,  familiar  and  divine, 
All  satisfactions  fail,  save  thine, 

Contemplation ! 
Ambitions  climb  and  fall; 
Love,  and  Hope,  his  thrall, 
Pity,  and  our  noblest  passions  pall; 
Yea,  one  and  all, 
Each  one. 

Not  Venus,  wreathed  with  bloom  and  vine, 
Glows  with  rapture  like  to  thine  — 

Meditation ! 
The  rose  can  never  be 
Sweet  as  our  revery 
About  her.     Lord,  each  deity 
Bows  down  to  thee, 

Each  one. 


133 


WHEN  subtle  passion  makes  me  slave 

And  leads  me,  in  her  golden  chain, 
Where  dazzling  legions  of  the  grave 

Troop  in  her  spurious  beauty's  train, 
Poetry,  make  then  thy  sign  — 
Lord  and  Sovereign  divine ! 

The  beast  wears  still  his  tusk  and  snout; 

Man  merely  has  dispensed  with  these. 
The  satyr  leeringly  looks  out 

Behind  the  mask  of  Socrates; 

Thou  only  art  of  heavenly  line, 
Lord  and  Sovereign  divine! 

When,  therefore,  orient- vestured  Sin 
Holds  her  usurping  court  in  me, 
Set  thy  white  torch  aflame  within 
Her  palace  walls,  O  Poetry, 

And  on  their  ashes  build  thy  shrine, 
Lord  and  Sovereign  divine ! 


134 


THE   SLINGER 


A  BOY,  who  stoops  upon  a  green  hillside, 
Where  he  has  climbed,  exhilarant  and  flushed, 
And   picks    up    a  flat   stone,    shell-shaped    and 

smooth  — 

A  piece  of  splitty  slate,  or  curved  feldspar  — 
Scanned  with  the  relish  of  an  expert  eye, 
And  fits  it  in  the  hollow  of  his  hand, 
And  sways  his  body  for  the  joyous  fling  — 
How  wondrously  he  shoots  it  through  the  air ! 
How  pent  with  song  it  soars  into  the  blue 
Stored  with  the  frenzy  of  his  boyish  whim, 
Skims  the  sunk  summit  of  the  tallest  pine, 
Rounds,  dips,  tacks,  turns,  then,  twirling,  soars 

again, 

Catching  the  sunlight  like  a  swallow's  wing; 
Then,  like  the  last  dip  of  a  'cellist's  bow, 
Or  a  ground-sparrow,  slacking  to  its  nest, 
Slants  the  long  slope,  and  dives  in  to  the  vale. 
135 


136  THE   SLINGER 

Not  more  inspired  the  pebble  David  slung ! 
A  stone,  a  lump,  a  clot  of  hardened  loam, 
Yet,  in  an  instant's  metamorphosis, 
It  leaps  to  beauty  like  a  work  of  God  — 
A  lyric  thing,  a  fellow  of  the  lark, 
Breathing  a  moment's  immortality  — 
Then  sinks  to  silence  and  the  loam  it  left. 

II 

Whose  was  the  hand  which  flung  me  into  breath  ? 
Whose  was  the  whim  or  purpose  of  that  deed  ?  — 
Flung  in  the  dizzy  zenith  of  clear  mind, 
Whirled  in  the  cloudy  vortex  of  dark  will, 
On,  on  —  projectile  of  a  deathless  youth, 
Poised  with  his  sling  upon  the  brow  of  heaven  — 
Skimming,  and  skimmed  by  other  whizzing  clay, 
Skipped  in  the  sun  to  caper  caracoles, 
What  is  of  man  the  ultimate  Goliath, 
Giant  of  111,  whom  he  must  batter  down 
That  Saul  the  Right  may  reign  ?    What  is  man's 

goal? 

Or  —  mindful  of  the  grim  analogy  — 
What  stricken  pine,  forgotten  in  the  forest 
That  skirts  the  valley  underneath  Time's  hill, 
Shall  mark  his  accidental  tumbling-tomb  ? 


LIFE  SAID  TO   DEATH 

LIFE  said  to  Death:  *  Brother, 
Who  was  our  mother  ? 
Did  not  One  who  bore  us 
Make  the  world  for  us: 
Were  we  not  twin-born  ? 
What  hast  thou,  then,  inborn 
Lordlier,  vaster, 
That  thou  playest  master? 
By  what  right  or  merit 
Dost  thou  inherit 
Earth's  beautiful  riches? 

Answer  me :  Which  is 

The  world's  more  deserving  — 

The  served,  or  the  serving? 

Thou  art  a  depender 

On  me,  yet  a  spender 

Of  all  my  dear  earnings, 

Rhapsodies,  yearnings. 

I  build,  thou  breakest; 
I  bring,  and  thou  takes*; 
I  save,  thou  lavishest; 
I  love,  and  thou  ravishest. 
137 


138  LIFE   SAID   TO   DEATH 

Deaf  and  disdainful, 
Thou  leavest  me  baneful  — 
Curst  all  I  care  for. 
Answer  me :  Wherefore  ? 

O,  say  that  thy  spendings 
Are  used  in  befriendings ; 
That  'neath  barbarity 
Thou  workest  in  charity, 
To  joy  givest  feeling, 
And  a  quick  healing 
To  pain's  slow  cancer. 
O,  loosen  the  tied  knot 
Of  silence,  and  answer !  — ' 

But  Death  replied  not. 


OLD  Age,  the  irrigator, 

Digs  our  bosoms  straighter, 

More  workable  and  deeper  still 

To  turn  the  ever-running  mill 

Of  nights  and  days.     He  makes  a  trough 

To  drain  our  passions  off, 

That  used  so  beautiful  to  lie 

Variegated  to  the  sky, 

On  waste  moorlands  of  the  heart  — 

Haunts  of  idleness,  and  art 

Still  half-dreaming.     All  their  piedness, 

Rank  and  wild  and  shallow  wideness, 

Desultory  splendors,  he 

Straightens  conscientiously 

To  a  practicable  sluice 

Meant  for  workaday,  plain  use. 

All  the  mists  of  early  dawn, 

Twilit  marshes,  being  gone 

With  their  glamour,  and  their  stench, 

There  is  left  —  a  narrow  trench. 


139 


As  children  fling  bright  silver  in  the  sea 
To  watch  it  shine  and  sink  there,  so  do  we 

Our  treasures  of  wrought  rhyme 
And  marble  toss  amid  the  surge  of  time. 


140 


GROUP  II 


CHARLES   ELIOT   NORTON 

Our  of  the  '  obscure  wood '  and  ominous  way 
Which  are  our  life,  to  that  obscurer  sea 
Whose    margin    glooms    and    gleams    alter 
nately 

With  storm  and  splendor  of  the  shrouded  spray  — 

He  has  departed.     Our  familiar  day, 

His  elm-hushed,  ivied  walks,  no  more  shall 

see 
That  radiant  smile  of  austere  courtesy: 

On  Shady  Hill  the  mist  hangs  cold  and  gray. 

He  has  departed  hence,  but  not  alone: 

Still    in   his   steps,   where   golden   discourse 

burns, 
To  Virgil  now  he  speaks,  and  now  he  turns 

Toward  Allighieri  in  calm  undertone, 

Holding  with  modest  tact  his  path  between 
The  Mantuan  and  the  mighty  Florentine. 


143 


FRANCIS    JAMES   CHILD 

How  fain  we  conjure  back  his  face  !    How  fain 
As,  bowed  with  musings  long  on  elvish  lore, 
He  clutched  his   satchel  at  the  class-room 
door 

And  shot  the  quick  "  Good-morning,  gentlemen," 

From  under  the  bronze  curls,  and  entered.     Then 
For  us  that  hour  of  quaint  illusion  wore 
Such  spell  as  when,  beside  the  Breton  shore, 

The  wizard  clerk  astounded  Dorigen. 

For  we  beheld  the  nine-and-twenty  ride 

Through  those  dim  aisles  their  deathless  pil 
grimage, 

Lady  and  monk  and  rascal  laugh  and  chide, 
Living  and  loving  on  the  enchanted  page, 

Whilst,  half  apart,  there  murmured  side  by  side 
The  master-poet  and  the  scholar-mage. 


144 


TO    GEORGE   PIERCE   BAKER 

THE  ghosts   of  Praise-God   Barebones  and   his 
clan 

Still  walk,  and  with  their  old  acerbity 

Infect  us ;   even  the  University 
Is  haunted  still,  and  the  sparse  Puritan, 
Turned  Prospero,  has  made  a  Caliban 

Of  human  passion,  and  wild  Poesie 

Pinched  in  an  oak  to  starve,  and  Mimicry 
And  all  her  kindred  Muses  put  to  ban. 

Yet  not  so  now  at  Harvard ;  there  betakes 

Him  now  the  scholar-player,  with  his  Muse 
(That  deathless  wench,  the  Mermaid)  and 
renews 

His  vows,  and  breaks  his  fast,  and  is 
restored 
By  our  own  Baker.  —  May  the  loaves  he  bakes 

Soon  pile  a  feast  at  Master  Shakspere's 
board ! 


145 


TO   WILLIAM   VAUGHN   MOODY 

MOODY,  our  time  is  glad  of  you ;  'tis  given 
(After  exotic,  ineffectual  blows) 
For  you,  a  poet,  with  sure  blade  of  prose 

Keen  from  the  artist's  scabbard,  to  have  riven 

Our  specious  theatre  from  its  roof-beam  even 
Unto  the  pit  of  smugness,  to  disclose 
The  emancipated  desert's  wild  repose  — 

The  new-world  gladness  of  our  native  heaven. 

Henceforth  we  cannot  be  the  same;  for  us 
Americans,  because  of  you,  the  tide 
Dramatic  turns  to  seek  its  heritage 
Splendidly  homeward  to  ourselves;   our 
stage 
Is  cleft:   between  its  pusillanimous 

And  daring  goals  stands  now  the  Great  Divide. 


146 


TO    THE    SAME,    AFTER    SEVERE    ILL 
NESS 

Now  that  you  are  come  up  from  the  hush  vale 
Whose  crumbling  verge  hugs  close  the  dread- 
named  stream, 

And  we,  for  whom  your  sojourn  there  did 
seem 

A  time  intolerable,  may  inhale 

Glad  breath  to  greet  you  on  the  old  firm  trail 
Of  health  again,  still  that  suspense  extreme 
Pervades  our  deep  thanksgiving,  like  a  dream 

Of  Him  whose  thin  hand  felt  the  sanguine  nail. 

For  not  alone  the  sentient  personal 

Pang  that  was  spared  compels  our  gratitude, 
But  that  contagious  loss  which  would 
have  spread, 
Unknown,  to  those  who  knew  you  not,  through 

all 

The  after-time;    but  now,  that  dread  sub 
dued, 

With  victory  life  girds  you,  garlanded. 
147 


TO    GEORGE    GREY   BARNARD 

HEWER  of  visions  from  our  human  clay, 

Hewer  of  man's  strong  soul  in  sentient  stone, 
Of  maiden  limbs,  like  breath  of  flowers  new- 
blown, 

Of  mighty  loins,  girded  in  giant  fray, 

Of  hearts  that  wrestle,  vanquish,  fall  and  pray  — 
Hail  to  you,  dauntless  Hewer  !    Not  alone 
Your  arm  is  raised  to  shape  the  vast  un 
known  : 

A  nation's  sinews  hold  that  arm  in  sway. 

Though  from  Carraran  hills,  by  alien  hands, 
Those  forms  of  plastic  vision  are  unfurled, 

Yet  in  their  glowing,  marble  chastities 
America  in  naked  splendor  stands 

Inviolate,  and  looms  across  the  world  — 
Labor's  impassioned  apotheosis. 


148 


TO   AUGUSTUS   FRANZEN ' 

HAD  poet  Geoffrey  been  a  painter  then 

In  Richard's  days,  he  would  have  painted 

true, 
Healthful  and  bold  and  beautiful,  like  you 

Franzen,  large-souled,  sure-handed.     Had  Fran 
zen, 

Painter  in  oils,  wielded  an  English  pen 
To-day  as  artist,  he  would  limn  anew 
Even  such  a  clear-eyed  Canterbury  view 

As  Chaucer  limned  of  nature  and  of  men. 

So,  when  I  watch,  anew,  my  little  son 

Take  breath  beneath  your  brush,  and  pout 
again 

His   arch   and   fresh-eyed   innocence,   I 
stand 
Silent,  and  take  your  hand  in  mine,  as  one 

Who,  in  Old  London,  or  Velasquez'  Spain, 
Held  in  his  own  a  living  master's  hand. 

1  With  a  copy  of  "The  Canterbury  Pilgrims." 


149 


TO    J.    E.    F. 

Is  this  our  common  world  of  weariness  — 

The  narrow  stream  we  fume  and  struggle  in  ? 

Soft  as  a  sleeping  ocean  and  serene 
The  quivering  city  slumbers,  measureless 
Under  the  moon :   the  roaring  paths  men  press 

By  day,  are  sweet  with  silences,  akin 

To  dying  murmurs  of  a  violin: 
Such  magic  has  the  moon  to  calm  and  bless. 

The   mind,   too,   has   its   moonlight,   which  can 

steep 
Time's  sordid  commonplace  in  harmony 

That  heals  pain  with  oblivion,  and  the 
scar 

Of  garish  strife  with  beauty,  and  the  deep 
Rebellions  of  the  soul  with  sympathy : 

Such  might  has  quiet  friendship's  mystic 
star. 


150 


THE   HILL-SPIRIT 

TO    R.    B. 

RIBBED  like  a  conch  and  ruddy  through  the  dark 
The  frail  wedge  of  his  horn-clear  tepee  glows 
Above  the  pasture-cliff,  warm  with  the  rose 

Light  of  its  own  live  heart :   outside  the  stark 

Grove  clinks  the  wampum  of  its  frozen  bark 
Against  the  starry  cold ;   a  shadow  shows 
Tall  in  the  tepee's  slit ;  then  in  the  snows 

Valeward  husht  moccasins  imprint  their  mark. 

Blithe  with  the  wonder  of  their  home  wood-fire 
The  hillside  children,  rapt  in  fairy  lore, 

Hark    suddenly    his    footstep:     giant- 
geared, 

He  stands  before  them ;  then  upon  the  floor 
Seated  beside  them,  like  an  immortal  sire, 

Laughs  —  with  one  great  hand  tangled 
in  his  beard. 


151 


TO   R.   E.   F. 

ARCH  twinklings  of  the  quaint  wood-smile  of  Pan, 
Far-trembling,    golden    lights    from    Jason's 

fleece, 
And  lyric  breathings  from  the  lutes  of  Greece, 

And  gentle  ardencies  from  old  Japan, 

With  whatsoever  blithe,  Arcadian, 

And  simply  wise  accord  with  such  as  these, 
Are  blent  in  you  to  one  true  Yankee  piece, 

Keen,  classic,  laughter-brewing,  Keatsian. 

By  forum,  Alp  and  oriental  fane 

(As    varied    climes    color    the    song-bird's 

wings) 
On  you  far  paths  and  fair  imaginings 

Have  traced   their  retrospects;    yet,   if 
there  be 

One  word  by  which  to  conjure  you  up  plain, 
That  fine  home-word  is  Hospitality. 


152 


TO   E.    H.    S. 

BRIGHT  in  the  dark  of  sleep  all  night  till  morn 
The  henchmen  dreams  about  my  bed  did  sit 
And  looked  on  me,  with  their  strange  torches 
lit; 

And  one  was  passionate,  and  one  was  lorn, 

And  one,  that  fingered  his  bronze  beard  in  scorn, 
Scowled  at  another's  smile  of  tranquil  wit; 
And  all  were  dreams  of  heroes  yet  unwrit 

In  dramas  high,  and  pageants  yet  unborn. 

O  happy  knight !  immortal  retinue  ! 

What   may  we   not,  when   morning  breaks, 

achieve ! 
The  morning  breaks  —  ah,  pale  and  strengthless 

crew! 

Who  now  shall  in  your  mighty  forms  believe  ? 
Dear  friend  and  host,  even  you  !     My  dreams 

I  leave, 
(Those  happy  dreams)  to  serve  and  honor  you. 


153 


GROUP  III 


FAIR  is  the  foreground  of  her  soul 
With  mirth  and  domesticity, 

And  vistas  far,  through  cottage  vines, 
Of  a  storm-lit,  pagan  sea. 

A  bluebird  nests  beneath  the  porch, 
A  hidden  song-sparrow,  hard-by, 

Sings  near  the  ground ;   but  overhead 
A  gull's  wing  glitters  high. 

Rose-fragrance  dreams  along  the  hedge, 
Wild  sea-tangs  drift  from  oif  the  wave, 

And  girlish  trebles  sweetly  pierce 
The  eternal  ocean-stave. 


157 


MY  love  was  freshly  come  from  sea 
The  morning  she  first  greeted  me: 
The  salt  mist's  tang,  the  sunny  blow 
Had  tinged  her  cheeks  a  ripening  glow. 

She  bowed  to  me  with  all  the  ease 
Of  meadow-grasses  in  the  breeze, 
And  yet  her  look  seemed  far  away 
Amid  the  splendors  of  the  spray. 

Her  step  was  vigorous  and  free 

As  maiden's  in  the  Odyssey; 

And  when  she  laughed,  I  heard  the  tunes 

Of  rushes  in  the  windy  dunes. 

An  air  so  limitless,  an  eye 

So  virgin  in  its  royalty  — 

Hers  was  a  spirit  and  a  form 

That  took  my  inland  heart  by  storm. 

I  felt  an  impulse,  an  unrest, 
And  secret  tides  within  my  breast 
Flowed  up,  with  silent,  glad  control, 
And  drew  the  rivers  of  my  soul. 
158 


THE  soft  rains  are  falling 
On  wild  rose  and  vine; 

The  far  winds  are  calling 
To  foreland  and  pine; 

The  big  wave  is  rocking 
The  gull  on  its  breast; 

The  surges  are  knocking 
With  joyous  unrest; 

There's  a  spirit  in  the  sky,  love, 
That  pants  for  the  sea, 

But  the  heart  that  beats  nigh,  love, 
Beats  higher  for  thee  ! 


159 


SHE  was  a  child  of  February, 

Of  tree-top  gray  and  smother'd  stream, 
Of  cedar  and  the  marsh  rosemary, 

Of  snowbird  and  the  sunset's  dream. 

A  frozen  brook  that,  April-eyed, 

Sings  soft  beneath  its  silver  fretting, 

Her  lyric  spirit  soon  belied 

The  ice  of  her  New  England  setting; 

Till  on  a  day  when  sudden  thaw 

Rent  all  her  snowy  chains  asunder, 

The  impassioned  sun  beheld  with  awe 
Her  heart  of  deep  Italian  wonder. 

Still  Nature  has  described  her  best, 
Veiled  in  those  February  skies, 
With  summer  singing  in  her  breast, 
And  April  laughing  in  her  eyes. 


160 


I  HEARD  the  waves  exulting  in  their  power, 

Their  unpaced  leagues  of  dim  immensity, 
Their  splendors  and    their    thunders    and    their 
dower 

Of  heaven's  far  glory,  and  I  thought :  —  the 
sea, 

The  sea  is  mighty !    Yet,  O  Love,  to  me 
Who  sought  a  symbol,  meagre  was  that  might 

Which  was  encliffed  and  shored,  for  vaster  be 
The  tides  of  love ;  not  beach  nor  beacon-light 
Marks  where  their  surges  clasp  the  misty  infinite. 


161 


MAID-MARINER 

THE  ragged  clouds  are  all  a-rout, 

And  the  white  gulls  reel  like  swallows, 
And  the  billowy  herds,  at  Triton's  shout, 

Plunge  snorting  down  the  hollows, 
And  my  heart  is  with  the  storms  a-stir 
For  Marian,  my  maid-mariner. 

The  spray  is  whiffed  by  the  sneezing  wind 
Where  the  dory's  prow  is  ducking, 

And  soughing  where  the  cliff  is  brined 
The  seaweed-cows  are  sucking, 

And  the  wild-duck  flocks  begin  to  whir, 
Marian,  maid-mariner! 

Then  come  with  me  to  the  green  salt  tides 

When  the  storms  have  slipt  their  traces, 
And  the  live  blood  vaults  in  our  glowing  sides, 

And  the  winds  flap  in  our  faces, 
And  hearken  to  my  heart's  harbinger, 
Marian,  maid-mariner! 

O,  if  the  world  were  all  a  bark, 

And  wishes  all  were  true,  love, 
With  one  blithe  maiden  I'd  embark  — 

Her  captain  and  her  crew,  love  — 
And  sail  the  world  away  with  her: 
My  Marian,  maid-mariner ! 
162 


OUT  of  the  drenched  and  leafless  night,  my  dear, 
Entering  to  you — like  hot-haste  March  I  feel, 

Who  bows  before  the  beauty  of  the  year, 

And  spurns   presumptuous  Winter  with  his 
heel. 


163 


MY  thoughts  are  like  pied  cattle  on  the  hills, 

Browsing  the  pale  green  slants,  through  silt 
ing  mist 
That  laps  the  verdant  uplands,  and  far  fills 

The  valleys  where  the  parted  woods  have 
kisst. 

Scarce  can  I  see  them  for  the  purpling  rain 

That  drives  across  the  pastures,  where  they 
loom 

Beyond  the  hedges  of  my  shrouded  brain, 
Herding  the  solemn  sunset  of  my  gloom. 

O  Fancy,  be  my  eager-lung'd  Boy-Blue, 
And  blow  upon  your  dewy  echo-horn 

A  blast  to  call  them  home  to  me  and  you 
Out  of  the  eerie  meads  and  magic  corn; 

For  they  shall  yield  us  white  abundance  of 
Their  milk,  for  me  to  bring  unto  my  love. 


164 


WHEN  beauty  ripens  newly  in  old  sheaves, 
Wears  purple  'mid  the  vine's  cold  penury, 

And  hides  young  blushes  in  age-altered  leaves, 
I  take  one  more  excuse  to  think  of  thee, 

Conceiving  this :   the  harvest's  mellow  gold 

Shall  gleam,  though  faded  harvests  feed  the 

swine ; 
The  sheafs  bright  glance  shall  shine  in  brandies 

old, 
The  dark  grape's  splendor  glisten  in  the  wine. 

So,  too,  when  thou  art  withered  from  the  earth, 
And  loveliness  no  habitation  finds 

In  thy  beloved  form,  yet  shall  thy  worth 

Still  glow  with  living  lustre  in  men's  minds. 

O  then  to  be  thy  vintager  I  ask, 

And  every  verse  of  mine  thy  beauty's  flask ! 


165 


WHEN  first  the  pussy-willow  shows 

Her  fairy  muffs  of  gray, 
While  still  amid  the  poplar  tree 
The  blithe,  familiar  chickadee 
His  morning  suet  gratis  gets,  — 
When  first  the  consternating  crows 
Break  on  the  winter-keen  repose 

Of  February  day 

Their  strident  cawings, 
Startling  with  Stygian  silhouettes 

The  virgin  snows 

To  wake,  and  with  faint  thawings, 

Like  speech  half-audible, 
Murmur  of  spring,  until  we  houslings  feel  — 
Or  dream  we  feel  —  the  breath 
Of  blowing  violets, 
That  start  where  the  old  oak-leaf  floats  to  death, 

At  such  a  time  — 
On  this  your  birthday  morning,  winter-weary, 

Once  more  the  stealing  rhyme 
Runs  up  within  my  heart,  to  greet  you,  dearie. 

For  now  through  all  of  nature  that  we  love 
A  vernal  change,  like  love's,  has  late  begun; 
166 


The  northing  sun 
That  nightly  from  Ascutney  shall  remove 

Farther  its  setting,  fills 
The  valley-chalice  of  the  Cornish  hills 
With  wine  of  warmer  splendors ;  by  woodways 

Those  spurting  flames  of  blue,  the  jays, 

Less  oft  the  eye  and  ear  amaze, 

Mock  musical,  with  gong-like  throat, 

Ringing  the  red-wing' d  blackbird's  note ; 

More  seldom  sounds  the  frosty  axe, 

And  by  the  rabbit-run 
Our  quaint  embroideries  of  snowshoe  tracks 

Grow  softly  blurred  and  charr'd 
On  their  south  edgings,  while  the  logging-bells 
Tinkle  less  coldly  through  the  hemlock  dells, 
Or  cease,  amid  snow-muffled  lumber-stacks, 
Where  sledges  come  to  "  Whoa  ! "  in  the  mill-yard. 

Therefore,  because  this  lovely  season  leaves, 

Like  all  else,  only  memory  to  take 

Joy  of  its  vestiges,  now  for  the  sake 

Of  fleet  delights  that  never  may  return, 

Watch,  dear,  with  me,  where,  'neath  the  dropping 

eaves 

The  iris-dewed  icicles  burn  and  burn, 
Till  beauty  on  our  minds  indelibly 
Shall  brand  her  image,  bright  with  mutability. 
167 


STEEP  ran  the  hill-road  out  of  the  wood: 
Lambent,  below  us 
Flushed  in  the  valley 
Snow-colored  twilight  — 
Black  isles  of  pine. 

Hushed  the  cold  tinklings,  shuddered  the  sleigh 
Round  the  horizon, 
Keen  and  auroral, 
Burned  on  the  hill-lines 
Inexpressible  rose. 

Snorted  the  silvery  breath  of  the  horse: 
Into  the  silken 
Quivering  silence, 
Slid  like  a  snowflake 
Saint  Agnes'  moon. 


168 


A  BIRTHDAY 

(FOR  s.  s.  P.) 

SEVENTY  years ! 

What  memories  are  the  peers 

Of  such  a  service !    Who  shall  send 

Awed  messengers  into  the  vast  of  mind 

To  summon  them  ?     Or  who  shall  find 

And  herald  their  grand  reticence  ?  —  If  hours 

Are  sometimes  epochs,  if  there  are 

Minutes,  which  rise  like  Babylonian  towers 

Above  time's  sordid  plain,  who  shall  declare 

The  grandeur  of  this  life  ?    What  angel  compass 

it? 

Not  words,  but  smiles  and  tears 
Can  hail,  with  homage  fit, 
Those  seventy  years. 


169 


ONCE  more  Chopin  and  Mendelssohn 
Have  conjured  you,  sweet  Mother ! 

How  playfully  you  charmed  the  one, 
How  pensively  the  other, 

As,  standing  tiptoe  on  the  stair, 

I  watched  your  waving  golden  hair ! 

Again  I  watch  the  flashing  keys  — 
A  dreamy  boy,  dear  Mother, 

Climbing  to  bed  by  slow  degrees; 
Again  my  sobs  I  smother 

Where,  hid  beneath  the  muffling  spread, 

The  heavenly  music  fills  my  head. 

The  heavenly  music  fills  again 

My  heart  with  childhood,  Mother, 

And  stirs  with  blended  bliss  and  pain 
Yearning  I  cannot  smother: 

A  husht,  tear-blinded  ecstasy 

Of  mingled  love  and  memory. 
170 


Only  Chopin,  or  Mendelssohn, 
None  holier,  and  none  other, 

Can  paint  for  me,  with  magic  tone, 
Your  portrait,  lovely  Mother: 

That  face,  amid  the  golden  hair, 

Forever  young  and  debonair ! 


171 


FOR   A   CHILD   CONVALESCENT 

BITTER  death, 
Blind  heart-ache, 

Now  that  you  are  gone, 
How  distracting-dear  you  make 
This  soft  breath,  this  ease-drawn  breath 

Of  my  beloved  one. 
Si?ig,  Spring! 

Be  gracious,  weather! 

My  love  and  I  and  you  are  together. 

Budding  boughs, 
Pale  blue  skies, 

What  if  you  had  come 
Senseless  to  her  sealed  eyes, 
Impotent  her  sleep  to  rouse, 

A.11  your  songbirds  dumb  ! 
Sing,  Spring! 

Be  grateful,  weather! 

My  love  and  I  and  you  are  togetJier. 
172 


FOR   A   CHILD   CONVALESCENT         173 

Mighty  God, 
Thou  in  grace 

That  didst  Death  deter: 
Lovely  is  Thy  tranquil  face 
In  the  sunlight  or  the  sod, 

Loveliest  in  her. 

Sing,  Spring! 
Bring,  wind, 

Soft  weather  — 
Long  and  kind. 
Sing,  Spring! 
Wing,  Song, 

On  lark's  feather  — 
Silver-lined. 

Bring  along, 
Wind, 

Kind  song  and  weather -, 
Singing  high  — 
High  on  lark's  wing  — 
My  love  and  I 

In  love  and  Spring 

My  love  and  I  are  together! 


HALFWAY  the  climbing  rose  of  Infancy  — 

With  tears  for  dew-drops  shining  on  its  thorns, 
Lit  by  the  Mother-smile  of  peaceful  morns, 

All  pink  in  bloom,  with  now  a  golden  bee, 

Burrowed  in  kisses,  to  hum  lullaby, 

And  now  a  shower,  that  intermits  and  warns 
The  birds  to  carol  'twixt  the  thunder's  horns, 

Robin  of  babyhood,  thy  nest  I  see. 

Babe  of  the  birds,  when  from  thy  rosy  source 
Thou   shalt   upclimb   to  boyhood's   ruddier 

charm, 

The  brooks  shall  mock  thy  boisterous  discourse, 
The  skies  uplift  thy  shout,  where,  held  from 

harm, 
Thou  shalt  disport  on  the  big  world's  battered 

torse 
Like  Bacchus  on  the  Elgin  Hermes'  arm. 


174 


CATHLEEN 

MY  Cathleen  of  the  wilding  curl 
And  roguish  yellow  ringlet, 

Oh,  are  you  but  a  budding  girl, 
Or  cherub  clipt  of  winglet  ? 

I  kissed  you,  clambering  at  my  knee, 
All  dimpled,  shy  and  darling, 

When  every  glance  you  shot  at  me 
Flew  like  a  starling. 

You  sang  to  me  from  printless  books 
Of  tree-top-boughs  a  secret 

So  hushed,  that  in  my  heart  those  looks 
Of  baby  wonder  speak  yet. 

Of  pussy-cat  —  the  chucklehead  ! 

An  epic  you  told  after, 
Till  porch  and  lawn  and  garden-bed 

Caught  that  clear  laughter. 

You  kissed  me  then  —  Ah,  twinging  joy ! 

Cathleen,  that  I  might  hover 
About  your  steps,  a  golden  boy, 

To  grow  your  golden  lover. 
175 


17G  CATHLEEN 

Your  lover !     Nay,  I  scorn  his  name, 
Far  rather,  oh,  far  rather 

1*11  live,  to  thwart  him,  what  I  am : 

His  someday  sweetheart's  —  father. 


A  BABY  it  was,  or  a  bird : 

'Twas  hard  to  tell  at  a  guessing; 
For  the  only  tidings  I  heard  — 

Save  a  lullaby  low  and  caressing  — 
Was  a  bunting  out  on  a  bough 

Calling:    Quick,  quick,  quick,  have  you  seen 

her? 
And  a  chickadee,  perched  on  the  mow, 

Singing:  Christy,  Christy,  Christina! 

Not  a  bird,  but  a  baby  she  is ! 

So  cuddly  and  quaint  and  surprising: 
As  fresh  as  sweet  clover  to  kiss, 

More  rosy  and  blithe  than  sunrising. 
And  her  brother  he  was  the  bird 

Calling:    Quick,  quick,  quick,  have  you  seen 

her? 
And  her  sister  the  songster  I  heard 

Singing:    Christy,  Christy,  Christina! 


177 


BE  merry,  dear,  for  merry  is  the  while, 

And  let  Mirth  make  a  ladder  of  thy  woes 

Whereon    thy    thoughts    may    mount    unto    thy 

smile  — 
As  fairies  climb  by  briers  to  the  rose. 


178 


THOU  art  the  still-renewing  spring 
For  poesie's  replenishing. 
By  thy  brink,  like  Rachel,  stands 
Beauty  pensive :   in  her  hands 
Poised,  she  holds  her  artless  pitcher; 
Her  own  reveries  bewitch  her 
Where  she  bends,  with  maiden  start, 
To  fill  it  faultless  at  thy  heart. 

But  I  —  poor  stumbler  with  verse-vessels, 

Worn  rhyme-thin  by  fancy's  pestles, 

Stub  my  toe  with  too  much  longing 

And  break  —  what  I  should  catch  the  song  in. 


179 


I  SAW  white  fields  and  shadows  gray 

And  clouds  the  low  sun  lurked  behind; 
A  quiet  seemed  to  tint  the  day 

With  fainter  colors  of  the  mind, 
For  all  of  nature  to  my  sight 
Was  tempered  by  an  inner  light. 

The  winter  sun  set  clear  as  wine, 

A  silent  star  stole  to  its  place, 
And  still,  beneath  a  glooming  pine, 
She  stood,  with  visionary  grace 

Watching  the  sky:   I  could  not  speak; 
The  words  that  faltered  were  too  weak. 

My  voice  was  smothered  in  my  eyes; 

I  gazed  —  and  what  so  changeless  sweet 
(Since  Love  has  twined  our  destinies) 
As  when,  in  retrospection  fleet, 
All  after-visions  I  forget, 
And  dream  that  I  am  gazing  yet. 


180 


THE  perfect  rose  has  but  a  paltry  fruit; 

The  gracious  summer  but  a  garish  end ; 
And  May's  sweet  choirs  in  August  all  are  mute, 

And   youth's  strong  loins  his  largess    soon 
dispend. 

The  water-lily,  at  her  ripening, 

Hides    in    the    muddied    lake   her   beauty's 

spores ; 
Even  in  the  tender  calyx  of  the  Spring 

The  icy-sharded  worm  of  Winter  bores. 

But  you,  dear,  are  a  flower  of  God's  own  isle, 
Whose  glamours  ripen  in  the  spirit's  seed; 

The  Galilean  lilies  are  your  smile, 

And  in  your  aching  heart  the  roses  bleed ; 

And  wreathed  of  fire  cold  Time  can  never  smother 
The  maiden  yields  her  garland  to  the  mother. 


181 


ONLY  the  strong  have  right  to  reign  in  song  — 
The  strong  of  soul,  that  are  the  warriors 
Of  God.  —  The  weak-at-heart,  he  that  out 
pours 

His  coward  pain,  perpetuates  a  wrong. 

Therefore  I  promised  you  I  would  be  strong, 

Or  silent :  But  now  —  hark  !  Again  the  doors 
Of  heaven  are  wide,  and  on  the  palace  floors 

I  greet  the  Nine,  who  wept  for  me  full  long. 

Look  up  once  more,  my  love  !    The  lark  is  risen ; 
Not  as  of  old,  above  the  immaculate  fields, 
Remote,  of  May  he  chants,  but  now  he  builds 
His  nest  of  dew  beneath  the  common  prison 
Of  Workaday :  —  O  hark  to  him,  dear  one, 
Rounding,  of  song  and  toil,  a  Pantheon ! 


182 


REALIZING  that  the  lives  of  men  are  rills 

Coursing  in  lines  consecutive  and  bright 

Down  the  pied  slopes  of  Time's  *  eternal  hills,' 
Or  flocks  of  mingling  sea-birds,  that  alight 

An  hour  upon  the  icebergs,  there  to  strew 
Wide  Babel  o'er  the  pristine  silences, 

Then,  soaring,  blend  in  the  universal  blue: 
Brooding  an  hundred  analogues  like  these 

That  show  how  we,  bright  atom-points  of  thought 
In  this  congested  brain  of  being,  reign 

An  instant  and  no  longer  in  the  plot 
Of  God ;  realizing  this,  and  then 

Remembering  I  run  my  race  with  thee, 
I  grow  in  love  with  my  mortality. 


183 


As  ripples  widen  where  the  stone  is  cast, 

So  we  do  wane  toward  the  banks  of  death ; 
As  dips  the  summer  grass  before  the  breath 

Of  the  west  wind,  so  lightly  we  are  passed : 

Our  lives  are  liquid ;  even  when  Grief  has  massed 
Their  evanescent  flowers  to  a  mort-wreath, 
They  are  such  icy  blooms  as  a  frosty  heath 

Paints  on  the  glass-pane,  and  as  long  they  last. 

Therefore,  since  joy  is  the  acquiescent  will 

That  blends  our  spirits'  limbs  with  all  which 
flows, 

Since  pain  is  the  stagnant  eddy  and  the  chill 

That  lies  congealed  within  the  withered  rose, 

Let  us,  sweet  friend,  of  beauty  drink  our  fill, 
And  fix  in  natural  change  our  soul's  repose. 


184 


INDEX  TO  POEMS  IN  PART 
TWO 


INDEX  TO  FIRST  LINES 

OF   THE    POEMS   IN    PART   TWO 

Across  the  moist  beam  of  the  cloud-rimmed  sun  105 

A  baby  it  was,  or  a  bird  177 

A  boy,  who  stoops  upon  a  green  hillside  135 

All  joys,  familiar  and  divine  133 

A  poppy,  all  on  fire  with  beauty's  beams  129 

Arch  twinklings  of  the  quaint  wood-smile  of  Pan  152 

A  rose  111 

As  children  fling  bright  silver  in  the  sea  140 

As  ripples  widen  where  the  stone  is  cast  184 

At  night,  I  prayed  for  sleep;  instead  110 

Auroral  tempest  on  an  auburn  sea  112 

Behold  where  Night  clutches  the  cup  of  heaven  115 

Be  merry,  dear,  for  merry  is  the  while  178 

Bitter  death  172 

Brief  Revelation  of  enduring  Truth  122 

Bright  in  the  dark  of  sleep  all  night  till  morn  153 

Dear  babe,  that  this  should  be  !    Whence  should 

this  come  124 

Even  as  an  infant  fingers  the  crisp  sheet  121 

Fair  is  the  foreground  of  her  soul  157 

Frail  Sleep,  that  blowest  by  fresh  banks  92 

Had  poet  Geoffrey  been  a  painter  then  149 

Hark  to  the  fairy  linnet  109 

Halfway  the  climbing  rose  of  infancy  174 

187 


188  INDEX 

Her  eyes  are  casements  clear  as  dew  97 

Hewer  of  visions  from  our  human  clay  146 

How  fain  we  conjure  back  his  face!    How  fain  144 

I  cannot  think  good-by  117 

I  dreamed  a  thousand  ages,  armed  with  flint  95 

1  heard  the  waves  exulting  in  their  power  161 

In  the  still  campagna  102 

1  saw  white  fields  and  shadows  gray  180 

Is  this  our  common  world  of  weariness  150 

I  watched  an  arc  light  under  wind-stirr'd  trees  93 

I  watched  a  drama,  sitting  in  the  wings  132 

Leisure,  kind  Leisure,  I  require  96 

Life  said  to  Death :  Brother  137 

Midway  the  silent  parlor  plain  125 

Moody,  our  time  is  glad  of  you ;  'tis  given  147 

My  Cathleen  of  the  wilding  curl  175 

My  love  was  freshly  come  from  sea  158 

My  thoughts  are  like  pied  cattle  on  the  hills  164 

Now  that  you  are  come  up  from  the  hush  vale  148 

Old  Age,  the  irrigator  139 

Once  more  Chopin  and  Mendelssohn  170 

Only  the  strong  have  right  to  reign  in  song  182 

Out  of  the  drenched  and  leafless  night,  my  dear  163 

Out  of  the  '  obscure  wood '  and  ominous  way  143 

Plastic  Fancies,  form  a  mould  130 

Realizing  that  the  lives  of  men  are  rills  183 

Ribbed  like  a  conch  and  ruddy  through  the  dark  151 

Rise,  sweet  signora  of  the  sigh  99 

Serene,  he  sits  on  other  shores  123 

Seventy  years  169 


INDEX  189 

She  stood  before  a  florist's  window-pane  94 

She  was  a  child  of  February  160 

Spring  is  Shakspere's  garden  106 

Steep  ran  the  hill -road  out  of  the  wood  168 

Strawberry-flower  and  violet  104 

Swan  of  the  silver  beak  and  sable  breast  100 

The  cricket  is  chirring  127 

The  flower  shall  fade,  not  the  spirit  116 

The  forms  sublime,  the  moods  elate  131 
The  ghosts  of  Praise-God  Barebones  and  his  clan        145 

The  Lady  of  the  Sunset  98 

The  perfect  rose  has  but  a  paltry  fruit  181 

The  ragged  clouds  are  all  a-rout  162 

The  soft  rains  are  falling  159 

This  baby  brow,  like  a  smooth  handkerchief  126 

Thou  art  the  still-renewing  spring  179 

Thou  husky  raven  of  the  insect  race  108 
Two  song-birds  build  their  nests  within  my  brain         91 

What  is  so  free  107 

When  beauty  ripens  newly  in  old  sheaves  165 

When  first  the  pussy-willow  shows  166 

When  subtle  passion  makes  me  slave  134 

Young  rider  and  steed  they  dash  on  through  the  dusk  118 


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been  made  for  many  years  to  American  dramatic  literature.  It 
is  true  poetic  tragedy  .  .  .  charged  with  happy  inspiration ; 
dignified,  eloquent,  passionate,  imaginative,  and  thoroughly 
human  in  its  emotions,  .  .  .  and  whether  considered  in  the  light 
of  literature  or  drama,  need  not  fear  comparison  with  anything 
that  has  been  written  by  Stephen  Phillips  or  John  Davidson. 
.  .  .  Masterfully  written  with  deep  pathos  and  unmistakable 
poetic  power."  —  New  York  Evening  Post. 

Mater  :  An  American  Study  in  Comedy 

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"  Mr.  Mackaye's  Mater  is  a  thing  of  pure  delight.  It  is  prose, 
but  a  prose  filled  with  poetic  fire.  Only  a  poet  could  have  con 
ceived  and  written  a  play  in  which  the  elements  of  seriousness 
and  laughter  are  so  admirably  blended.  .  .  .  The  dialogue 
throughout  shows  Mr.  Mackaye  at  his  best:  there  is  in  it  life 
and  light,  quick  movement,  and  outpouring  of  song."  —  Book 
News  Monthly. 

Fenris,  the  Wolf 

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"A  drama  that  shows  triple  greatness.  There  is  the  supreme 
beauty  of  poetry,  the  perfect  sense  of  dramatic  proportion,  and 
nobility  of  purpose.  It  is  a  work  to  dream  over,  to  make  one 
see  glorious  pictures,  —  a  work  to  uplift  to  soul  heights  through 
its  marvellously  wrought  sense  appeal."  —  Examiner. 

The  Scarecrow 

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11 A  delightful  and  significant  piece  of  philosophical  satire  ;  .  . 
a  drama  which  is  full  of  imagination,  and  well  worthy  a  place 
in  our  literature."  —  New  York  Mail. 


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The  Flower  of  Old  Japan,  and 
The  Forest  of  Wild  Thyme 


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"  Mr.  Noyes  is  first  of  all  a  singer,  then  something  of  a  seer  with 
great  love  and  high  hopes,  and  aims  to  balance  this  rare  combina 
tion.  .  .  .  Readers  of  gentle  fibre  will  find  this  book  not  only  full 
of  rich  imagery  and  refreshing  interest,  but  also  a  wonderful  pass 
port  to  the  dear  child  land  Stevenson  made  so  real  and  telling,  and 
which  most  of  us,  having  left  it  far  behind,  would  so  gladly  re 
gain."  —  Chicago  Record-Herald. 

The  Golden  Hynde  and  Other  Poems 

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most  hope-inspiring  figures  in  our  latter-day  poetry.  He,  almost 
alone  of  the  younger  men,  seems  to  have  the  true  singing  voice, 
the  gift  of  uttering  in  authentic  lyric  cry  some  fresh,  unspoiled 
emotion."  —  New  York  Post. 


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"  Mr.  Noyes  is  surprisingly  various.  I  have  seldom  read  one  book, 
particularly  by  so  young  a  writer,  in  which  so  many  things  are  done, 
and  all  done  so  well."  —  RICHARD  LE  GALLIENNK  in  the  North 
A  merican  Review. 

BY  W.  B.  YEATS 
Poems  and  Plays 

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The  first  volume  contains  his  lyrics  up  to  the  present  time;  the  sec 
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The  Land  of  Heart's  Desire,  The  King's  Threshold,  On  Baile's 
Strand,  and  The  Shadowy  Waters. 

"  Mr.  Yeats  is  probably  the  most  important  as  well  as  the  most 
widely  known  of  the  men  concerned  directly  in  the  so-called  Celtic 
renaissance.  More  than  this,  he  stands  among  the  few  men  to  be 
reckoned  with  in  modern  poetry."  —  New  York  Herald. 

BY  MRS.  ELLA  HIGGINSON 
When  the  Birds  Go  North  Again 

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tractive  charm  to  many  readers."  —  7^he  Boston  Transcript. 

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The  Chicago  Tribune  says  that  Mrs.  Higginson  in  her  verse,  as  in 
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BY  CONINGSBY  WILLIAM  DAWSON 
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garded  as  symbolical,  likewise  is  the  Poem.  But  the 
symbolism  of  the  latter  is  distinct  from  any  hitherto  ascribed 
to  the  Picture;  contrasting  as  it  does  Worldly  Ambition 
with  Spiritual  Aspiration,  the  Political  career  in  its  lowest 
aspect  with  the  Literary  career  in  its  highest. 

BY  WILLIAM  J.  NEIDIG 

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"  In  rhythm,  in  diction,  in  imagination  andbeauty  of  thought 
Mr.  Neidig  has  seemed  to  us  to  have  been  decidedly  suc 
cessful."  —  Richmond  Times  Despatch. 

BY  WENDELL  P.  STAFFORD 

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A  volume  of  poems  by  Justice  Wendell  P.  Stafford,  of  the 
Supreme  Court  of  the  District  of  Columbia.  The  title, 
Dorian  Days,  comes  from  the  fact  that  the  beauty  of  ancient 
Greece  is  in  great  measure  the  inspiration  of  the  volume. 
This  return  to  classic  art  and  classic  myths  on  the  part  of 
one  who  has  played  so  prominent  a  part  in  the  life  of  his 
own  day  as  Justice  Stafford  is  particularly  noteworthy. 


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UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
BERKELEY 

THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
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NOV  11 1918 


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